After struggling with running the laptop through our TV (at first easy but then our "smart" TV ran updates and now nothing is easy) I have finally bought a Roku stick and can now watch the Criterion Channel directly through the TV. This may not mean anything to you, but trust me, it's a big deal! Added to that that we have switched from unreliable AT&T to endorsed-by-Jami's-lawschool-Zoom-classmates Xfinity (owned by the evil Comcast, but you can't avoid evil), and we were able to have a glitch-free pleasant film-viewing experience. But what about the film, you say? Well, it's the kind of film they seemed to churn out in the 70's, and usually featuring either Warren Beatty or, in this case, the other pretty-boy, Robert Redford. It's funny, though, because although it also features George Segal (and in fact, is part of a George Segal assortment, him having just died and all) and Zero Mostel as a late-arriving bad guy, the rest of the cast is completely unknown to me, including the two gangmates of Redford's Dortmunder (the brains, seen being released from prison at the beginning of the film, as the warden almost fondly chides him that he's bound to be back) and Segal's Kelp (the self-doubting lock expert, married to Dortmunder's sister). Ron Leibman and Paul Sand, anybody?
Anyway, it slides by at an easy pace, and almost the main pleasure is immersing oneself in 70's New York.
That's not quite fair: the film does seem a bit forced to begin with, as we learn that Kelp has a job lined up (big surprise) for Dortmunder, one that involves stealing a priceless diamond from a museum at the behest of a professor (Moses Gunn) from one of the two (fictional) African countries that have been fighting over it for time immemorial.
They will need Liebman's Murch, the driver and Sand's Greenberg, the explosives expert. All goes well, with Murch and Greenberg creating a diversion outside the museum while Dortmunder and Kelp work on the case (later joined by Greenberg), but although self-doubting Kelp manages the locks,
somehow he gets trapped inside long enough for all the guards to come back in from outside and almost catch Dortmunder and Kelp, and actually catch Greenberg - who has the jewel! So he swallows it just before they find him. He then makes contact with the rest of them through his lawyer, Zero Mostel, who turns out to be his father, letting them know he'll give them the jewel if they bust him out of prison. So this becomes their next gig. And, of course, they manage it, but then Greenberg reveals he doesn't have the jewel on him - he "passed" it while still in the jail they took him to in the precinct house he was taken to after the museum. So this becomes their next gig (you see how it goes). And each time Kelp takes a list of materiel to Gunn's increasingly outraged Dr. Amusa. It was a truck for the second job, it's a helicopter for the third... which comes up empty. The jewel is gone from Greenberg's hiding place. And the only person he'd told about it was his lawyer/dad... You can probably see where this is going. As I said, it's a slow amble to begin with, but with each failed job it ratchets up the tension a little and it has an excellent ending. "Afghanistan banana stand."
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