Trying a European variation on Bonnie and Clyde, I suppose, Warren Beatty made Richard Brook’s anti-hero caper flick $ with Goldie Hawn in 1971. He’s a bank security consultant come to Hamburg to bring the latest tools and methods to a big bank and she’s a cute American somehow turned to hooking there and somehow, we’re never told so much as how they meet, but they’re working together on his scheme to rip off the safe deposit boxes of customers who can’t complain about their losses.
The targets, who all depend on then-existent bank security laws guaranteeing anonymity, are a mob lawyer (character actor Robert Webber) who makes monthly deposits from the Vegas skim, a pair of American serviceman stationed in Germany and running a series of protection rackets and other scams and a murderous drug courier. Beatty uses a fake bomb threat to trap himself inside the vault holding the boxes and craftily transfers the contents into Hawn’s own box.
Written and directed by Brooks, who’d been nominated and won Oscars for such great films as Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Professionals, and In Cold Blood, the film should have ended there, with Beatty and Hawn laughing in his car and the three victims discovering their loss, but no, that’s not good enough for these moviemakers. Though the mob lawyer appears to die of a heart attack after opening his empty box, the other three connect and go after their money. So we get a strung out, two part chase, on foot, in cars, up an enormous stairway, even across a frozen lake. And yes, that champagne bottle does finally get used.
Not bad, not great
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