The tip off was early in this movie. The film was being produced by Lord Lew Grade and his company ITC Entertainment. ITC was responsible for a number of classic films such as Killer Fish, Bonkers, Where the Boys are 84 and Bloody Kids.
The stars were Ryan O'Neal the pretty boy of "Love Story" and the actress Anne Archer a woman apparently born without any hips.
Lots of plot in this movie. The story is a rehash of Topkapi with Ryan planning a big heist of the usual not very secure safe loaded with emeralds (green ice). Archer is the woman out to avenge the death of her sister who got mixed up with revolutionaries trying to steal the emeralds. The revolutionaries plan to finance the overthrow of their government with the emeralds. This will end the tyrannical control of their nation by an evil Italian diamond merchant played by the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif.
Lots of plot in this movie. The story is a rehash of Topkapi with Ryan planning a big heist of the usual not very secure safe loaded with emeralds (green ice). Archer is the woman out to avenge the death of her sister who got mixed up with revolutionaries trying to steal the emeralds. The revolutionaries plan to finance the overthrow of their government with the emeralds. This will end the tyrannical control of their nation by an evil Italian diamond merchant played by the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif.
Sharif wants to marry Archer as her father is the head of some evil diamond organization which he has been kicked out of. The marriage will get him back into the good graces of this organization which has exiled him to this Latin American country where he now controls the emeralds being mined.
Ryan plays an electronics expert who figures out how to break into Sharif's vault although it seems like Ryan could barely change a light bulb as the old joke goes. The big sequence involves using personalized hot air balloons to fly across the city and land on Sharif's building where the emeralds are kept. No one seems to notice the hot air balloons flying over the city.
The nothingness of this movie is demonstrated by the fact that virtually no pictures exist of it on the Internet. The exceptions were some stills that I found from some very odd website that features men carrying unconscious women around.
The reason I am spending so much time on this ridiculous plot is because the technical level of the film is very proficient. The photography, editing, musical score and the pleasant location work keep this thing from entirely landing in the gutter.
This is what it's come to for bad movie watching. Movies are now so well made, the viewer can barely tell the good crap from the bad crap.
116 minutes.
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