kris-166-263107 I love Tom Selleck's early movies where he was clearly willing to take a chance. Once he began his career into western type movies the boredom set in for me. This was a risky movie to make, but he clearly succeeded! Great mystery, fun story line, and I never saw the ending forecast. Beware of full nudity if that bothers you. There's enough violence if you find that less threatening than the peacefulness and beauty of the human body.Set in pre WWII London, this story is based on the reputation of an established American cat burglar caught in a police frame to steal Nazi diamonds. Lassiter's solution is brilliant and, for me, completely unpredicted. Marvelous! Watch and enjoy. See if you can figure out what's REALLY going on!

bkoganbing Playing the title role of Lassiter in this film is Tom Selleck at the height of his television stardom with Magnum, PI. He's an American expatriate now living in London and making a nice living as a society burglar. He must have understudied with Raffles.But he's got one confirmed enemy in Scotland Yard's Inspector Bob Hoskins. You can see how pained he is when British Intelligence and our own FBI in the person of Joe Regalbuto want him for his services in burglarizing the German Embassy in that year or so when Neville Chamberlain declared peace in our time and World War II actually began.Selleck is a lot less unflappable than he is as Magnum. That's because Hoskins is just itching to nail him if something goes wrong. There are two prominent female parts, Jane Seymour as the good girl and Lauren Hutton doing her best Marlene Dietrich imitation as full time Nazi seductress and a real man killer literally.Jewels is his game and a fortune in gems the Germans are known to keep in their embassy is what the British want. They say the sale of the swag will finance all kinds of subversion. Selleck might have alternate uses in mind.Playing a small but very key role is fellow expatriate Ed Lauter who used to be a bootlegger in the States along with Selleck but left for the United Kingdom where the cops don't carry guns and therefore not likely to shoot you. Lauter is a wheel man and that fact plus the fact that their police don't carry weapons is key to how Selleck pulls the caper off.Lassiter is a lighthearted caper film and a caper pulled against the most evil of villains is something always the audience will like.

mnpollio Convincing period settings highlight this uneven film inspired by some of the caper films of the 1930s focusing on a suave cat burglar in London blackmailed into service for the Allies. He is tasked with trying to break into the imposing German Embassy and stealing some gems in an attempt to foil a Nazi plot.A fun concept somehow goes astray and never realizes its full potential. Director Roger Young and company take an old-fashioned plot, dress it up in dandy clothes, add some dashes of modern sex, violence and nudity, but their final effort falls apart long before the conclusion and, at least in one case, it is not hard to see why.A plot this simple should move with fleet feet, but the pace instead moves in fits and starts. The bones of a great film are here, but they are never fleshed out enough and some convoluted plot additions do not help. The film drags on long past the point it should have concluded and contains at least one too many conclusions.The production looks great and sports a fine supporting cast. Bob Hoskins is on hand as a sputtering British bobby who does not like giving the elusive Lassiter a get-out-jail-free card for his efforts. Jane Seymour is as pretty as a porcelain doll as Lassiter's girl Friday. Lauren Hutton has a field day as the sexually voracious and deadly German courier whom Lassiter must romance in order to scope out the interior of the German Embassy. Unfortunately, after presenting Hutton as a truly deadly nemesis, the film completely bungles their final confrontation and fails to show us their love scene, which one would imagine would have been wild indeed.The film's biggest problem lies with its leading man. Obviously the character of Lassiter conjures up the likes of a George Sanders, David Niven or Cary Grant. In short, it requires someone charismatic, urbane, debonair yet able to pull off the physical action required. After having bored us to death two years previously with a similar period adventure in High Road to China, actor Tom Selleck now torpedoes another period piece. Where debonair is called upon, Selleck gives us dull. Where suspense and action are called for, Selleck gives us lifeless. He comes off as little more than a good-looking prop who can barely summon the energy to move from point A to point B on the set. I would say he is wooden, but I am afraid to libel a tree. He never seems much of a match for Hutton, proves a dismally lacking romantic foil for Seymour and comes off as little better than a stunt man in the action scenes. We have no rooting interest nor concern in what happens with this character and that is largely the fault of Selleck's lackluster performance. By the film's conclusion, quite literally the ONLY memorable thing that Selleck has contributed is in briefly baring his best asset while exiting Hutton's bed in the nude. This stellar contribution is offset moments later when a guard catches him lounging around in Hutton's frilly robe and a scene where the actor could have demonstrated a light comic touch is instead played as if a humorless mannequin inhabited the part.Rarely have I seen an actor whose low-wattage on screen personality so completely sabotages a film (Rob Lowe's ho-hum performance in Masquerade comes to mind, but that film was strong enough to overcome him), as what Selleck does here. Hollywood was and is teaming with a lot of good-looking leading men, so why filmmakers would choose to fill such a role as this with an actor of arguably no charisma or life is a real head-scratcher. In all honesty, in some scenes Lassiter could have been portrayed by a chair and the end result would offer no difference than what Selleck contributes here.

PatrickMagee What more could you ask for than a handsome thief, two gorgeous women, a wimp of an FBI man, a bully of British cop, a super black Mercedes Coupe, a vintage motor cycle, gambling, a murder, bumbling Gestapo thugs and supporting actors that truly support the play that is in progress! Well written, directed and acted, progress keeps things moving (even flying through the air on a wire!) at a good pace that won't leave you behind, but will get you to the end. There are even street scenes with costumes and vehicles galore! In other words, the sets are good as well! Enjoyable!