Elaborate caper movie which, while nothing special, is redeemed by its unusual Israeli setting. Robert Shaw has a dual role as an industrialist and his security device-maker twin (the karate match between the two Shaws constitutes perhaps the film's low-point!). Ex-con and thief Richard Roundtree (often clad in conspicuously outlandish costumes) and lover Barbara Hershey (billed Barbara Seagull) are industrialist Shaw's unwilling accomplices in a diamond robbery whose security system was devised by none other than his brother (whom he admits to not liking!). Shelley Winters turns up in irrelevant bits as an annoying American tourist; GET CARTER (1971)'s Roy Budd provides the score. Caper movies are among my favorites (maybe, it's because I work in a bank) but this is a very mild addition to that exciting thriller subgenre chiefly because of an unconvincing plot also involving child kidnapping, a counter robbery from a church to mislead the Israeli police, the gang donning a series of silly disguises and, ultimately, a burglary which remains unfulfilled (again, a fashionable twist in the cynical 1970s but rather ludicrous in this context!).
Review of Diamonds
