HotToastyRag There's a reason Hollywood keeps making heist movies decade after decade: people always watch them! Well, I do, anyway. In The Hot Rock, Robert Redford and George Segal join up to steal a diamond from a museum that Moses Gunn wants to return to his people in Africa. In true 1970s fashion, the film turns into a heist-gone-wrong comedy, and every time the team of robbers tries to take the diamond, an unexpected glitch ruins everything and sends them back to the drawing board.There are some pretty funny gags—my favorite is Robert Redford's "that's good and that's bad" speech—and during the suspenseful scenes you're able to relax a bit because no one ever gets hurt in a comedy. It's not the best heist movie you'll ever watch, but it's far from the worst, so if you think George Segal is funny or you're looking for some blond eye candy in your next crime comedy, rent The Hot Rock for a few laughs.

screenman Starring Robert Redford in his prime, this movie is one of several from the period that are nowhere near as smart of as slick as they pretend.As a comedy drama/crime caper it strolls along with an air of smug satisfaction than often seems to drag. It's a very dated, 1970's piece. The dialogue is pretentious. Some of the heists and foul-ups are just too contrived. Comparing it with the 'The Italian Job' of 3 years earlier, really highlights its short-comings in characterisation.There is no stand-out event to raise this movie beyond the very ordinary. I mostly remember it for the bizarre 'Afghanistan banana-stand' exclamation, which sounds like something Mary Poppins might have uttered.There's a typically overblown jazz theme and incidental music that tries to endorse its hip pretensions but only leaves it sounding like so many others. Check-out 'Pelham 123' to see how it should be done.It's the only Redford movie that I can't recommend. But every actor makes at least one lemon in his lifetime.

bkoganbing The Hot Rock has a soft spot in my heart because the area of Brooklyn where a lot of the film was shot, I know very well, Eastern Parkway, The Botanical Gardens and most of all The Brooklyn Museum I know very well from years of living in the Borough of homes and churches. The Brooklyn Museum is where the elusive Hot Rock resides or at least where it first resides.Robert Redford is released from prison and his brother-in-law George Segal is there to greet him. As Redford says to warden Graham Jarvis there ain't no chance in hell he's going straight. Straight into another caper that Segal has lined up for him with Ron Leibman and Paul Sand.The amiable team is hired by African ambassador Moses Gunn from some fictional central African country to get a national treasure, a rather large diamond on display at the Brooklyn Museum. They do steal the diamond, but through an incredible combination of circumstances have to plan and execute four different break-ins before The Hot Rock is in their hands. Redford and Segal display a good chemistry, as good as the fabled co-starring chemistry of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Why they were not heralded as a buddy combination is beyond me.Stealing the film in whatever scenes they are in are shyster attorney Zero Mostel and his doofus of a son, Paul Sand. In the first caper at the museum, Sand gets caught and what he does with the diamond sets up the entire rest of the film.As for Zero we find he's an attorney with absolutely no scruples whatsoever, the kind they make excellent lawyer jokes about. But he does give us some excellent laughs.The Hot Rock is something on the order of an American domestic version of Topkapi. The laughs in it are good and strong, although some of the Seventies fashions make me wince. Despite that the film holds up well today. I'm surprised no one is thinking of remaking this one.

jc-osms Looked at now, this seems a very dated "buddy/caper" movie from the early 70's. Neither as suspenseful as "Topkapi" or as humorous as "The Pink Panther", it hopes to get by mainly on its star appeal, as personified by Robert Redford and hot-at-the-time George Segal. However there's not much acting to be had; with a script bereft of substantial dialogue and a fair smattering of time-consuming stunts, our two heroes mainly just get to bark at each other and mug at the lens, all the more surprising when you appreciate the screenplay is by William Goldman, late scriptor of "Butch Cassidy", the epitome of "buddy" movies and its little brother, the soon-come "The Sting". Segal is no Newman however and it's obvious that Redford is very much the main man here, but other than giving us his preferred profile, he's rarely exercised in a film that looks as if it was more fun to be in than to watch. The attempts at humour are forced, painfully at times, the supporting cast also exaggerate their playing, none more so than the choice hunk of ham that is Zero Mostel as the movie moves episodically and elephantinely to its even more improbable ending (a safe-deposit bank employee gets hypnotised by the floor-selection buttons in a lift...!). Quincy Jones' cod-jazz soundtrack, peopled as it is by heavyweight musicians like Gerry Mulligan and Clark Terry, doesn't help either. I could go on about the unfunny set-pieces of the botched robbery at the museum, attempts to fly a helicopter and the saw-it-coming-around-the-corner bluff which wrings the required confession out of Mostel's "Dishonest Abe" character but other than a passing hindsight discomfort at seeing a low-flying aircraft circling the under-construction World Trade Centre buildings, there's really very little to say one way or another. In fact the biggest laugh for me was unintentional - the gang's agreeing to pull off the heist for a measly $25000 each, the effect akin to Dr Evil's latter-day demand for $1,000,000 to stop him destroying the world in "Austin Powers". The 70's threw up some fine contemporary movies (many of which starred and were enhanced by Redford - "Three Days Of The Condor", "The Candidate" and "All The President's Men" to name but three). Here however he's coasting in a flaccid movie that does little for the reputations of cast and crew.