afkeegan An all too familiar story in our world: A professor with too much time on his hands plots a diamond heist and enlists the help of a New York mobster and a team of nefarious experts who's specialties run the spectrum of various prerequisites for daring jewel capers, such as safe-cracking, etc. No surprises here- although one member of the team is a professional playboy- and are there really such things? How does one earn the title of playboy?- who's only job is to seduce the icy secretary with the key to the vault! You'll probably see the twist coming but they keep their cards close to the vest so there's still a tinge of surprise at the end. Fans of Kinski will not find a heck of a lot to snicker about as they watch their favorite crazy-friend-of- Herzog plod through another flick he probably just did for money. While Kinski isn't quite plausible as a hardened military man, he does a pretty fine, straight job in this role. Good times, all around.

zardoz-13 "Machine Gun McCain" director Giuliano Montaldo's "Grand Slam" qualifies as one of those traditional perfect heist capers where crime doesn't pay, as in "The Asphalt Jungle," "Topkapi," "Any Number Can Win," "The Anderson Tapes," and "The Italian Job." Furthermore, the mastermind of this audacious thriller is an elderly gentleman who assembles a team of experts to execute his 'meticulous' plan to the letter. Edward G. Robinson adds a certain grandeur to "Grand Slam" as a retired school teacher who has spent 30 years teaching in Rio de Janeiro when he hasn't been filming deposits at a diamond company occupying the building across the street from the school. Formulaic from fade-in to fade-out, "Grand Slam" ranks as one of the better examples of the genre. This nimble thriller opens with our protagonist consulting the mob in New York City to recruit an international gang that have no criminal records. Robinson personally speaks to each and then the heist occurs and everything comes full circle back to the mastermind and his moll. Not only do Montaldo and his writers put plenty of obstacles in the path of the criminals, but he also generates palatable suspense during the robbery. Cynicism, greed, treachery and surprise sets during the rollicking the second half.Retired history professor James Anders pauses on the way to boarding his jet at Rio de Janeiro airport to listen as young students from a Catholic School serenade him before he flies off to New York City. In the Big Apple, Anders visits an old friend, Mark Milford (Adolfo Celi of "Thunderball"), who has acquired a notorious reputation as an underworld figure, though armed bodyguards surround him. Anders goes out to Milford's residence. Milford and he discuss old times and then Anders presents him with an innocuous 8mm film reel and they watch as Ander's describes his former occupation and the school where he taught history. Opposite it looms the building for a Brazilian diamond vault. Milford selects four men—a safecracker Gregg (Georges Rigaud), a gigolo Jean-Paul Audry (Robert Hoffmann), a strong arm man Erich Weiss (Klaus Kinski of "For a Few Dollars More"), and an electronics technician Agostino Rossi (Riccardo Cucciolla) to carry out his plan. He promises to pay each of them a million dollars when they split the loo. Anders buys each man a lighter that is identical and they use these lighters for their criminal cohorts to recognize them. Ander interviews each of his accomplices before he vanishes from the action and they perform the crime."Grand Slam" is predictable in the sense that the writers foreshadow the flaws in the plan too well. Happily, each character is etched with nuance enough to support their motivation. Kinski is believable as the never-say-die Nazi and Robinson is brilliant as the professor. "Grand Slam" is not without irony. Although the perpetrators don't escape with the loot, they are neither arrested nor face imprisonment. This movie contains a scene that the people who made "Entrapment" must have known about in advance because it so closely imitates the scene. The vault scene with the infrared light beams that criss-crossed the area reminded me of "Entrapment." The quirky Ennio Morricone orchestral soundtrack enhances the plot. Lenser Antonio Macasoli, who photographed both "Cannon for Cordoba" and "Guns of the Magnificent Seven," makes everything look impeccably cinematic, even the opening aerial shots around New York City. Sergio Leone's editor Nino Baragli cut things together. The process shots of Robinson in Rio at the airport look abysmal. Nevertheless, "Grand Slam" is an above-average perfect crime caper with more than enough suspense and surprises.

Conrad Spoke Did anybody fall for this in 1967? In that year I was eight years old, and I already hated this kind of crap. I would have been yelling at the screen. I yelled at the screen last night.Perhaps this was the first heist film that used laser beams in a vault as an obstacle to thieves, but why did they do it so badly? The laser beams, which criss-cross the vault like a spider web, are done in an ostensibly clever way: translucent tubing filled with light. But when the thieves climb over the beams with a fancy telescoping ladder rig we can clearly see the laser beams sagging! Not just a little, either. Worse, we can see a connection point where two pieces of tubing were joined. It's a friggin' close-up! This kind of sloppy craftsmanship really takes you out of the film.It gets worse. The safe is rigged with a delicate noise detector. The sound of a cigarette lighter is enough to set it off. The solution? Lift the entire safe with pneumatic lifts, stick on little wheels, soundproof the wheels with shaving cream (I kid you not), and push the safe ten feet away from the sound detectors. Then start drilling those titanium doors. Then blow it with nitro glycerin. Then silently push the safe back up the ramp and into the vault (more shaving cream), disconnect the pneumatic lines, cart away your seventy-five pounds of equipment, and close the vault door. All without making as much sound as a Zippo.This film was co-produced by Spanish, German, and Italian film companies. Is it possible that in an audience of, say, 100 Spaniards or Germans or Italians, no one made a huge PUK-SSHHH! sound when those air hoses were disconnected? Maybe not. Maybe they were better at suspending disbelief than an eight-year-old American.Compare this to the new gold standard for technical competence in that era of film-making, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Although history has unspooled very differently than as predicted in "2001" (no cities on the moon, no manned exploration of other planets), those cinematic predictions were very carefully executed. The craftsmanship was exquisite. If the Americans and British who made "2001" had been as clumsy as the hacks who made "Grand Slam," there never would have been any discussion about the religious or spiritual meaning of that bizarre last act. Those questions were discussed very seriously in the late 60's (and still are) because "2001" was a believable world where our powers of disbelief remained suspended for 2 1/2 hours.Now, of course "Grand Slam" is just a heist movie. It's doesn't have any deep pretensions. Does that excuse its technical shoddiness? Of course not. Even a frothy story needs to keep us within the walls of the story, so that we can be lied to convincingly. When fundamental facts are ignored, the movie is over. The Confederate army can't wear blue. You can't drive to Australia. And laser beams can't sag.Maybe this is why the United States was the technological powerhouse of the world in the 1960's. We cared about getting it right. And we still do. Even bad American movies are produced with a technical brilliance that outstrips the stupidity of the above-the-line talent. And web sites like MovieMistakes.com help keep our standards from flagging.Maybe "Grand Slam" deserves credit for inspiring better films, such as "The Italian Job" two years later. Perhaps you can insist that "Ocean's Twelve" owes its dancing laser beams to "Grand Slam." But at least in "The Italian Job" when things blow up they go BOOM!, and in "Ocean's Twelve" the laser beams don't sag.

movieman_kev An elderly school teacher (the late great Edward G. Robinson) employs an electrotech (Riccardo Cucciolla) , a playboy (Robert Hoffmann), a safe cracker (Georges Rigaud), and a military man(Klaus Kinskey) to complete a daring heist of 10 million in diamonds from a vault in Rio De Janeiro. This crime caper has a good buildup, the heist suitably engrossing. I could see the end coming (mostly), but that didn't detract much from my overall enjoyment of the movie. It still remains among the top caper movies that I've seen.My Grade: B+ Blue Underground DVD Extras: Poster and Stills Gallery; and Theatrical Trailer Eye Candy: blink and you'll miss tiny boobies courtesy of Jussara