The Master Touch (1974)

Very well executed

Good movie but grossly overrated

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This entertaining 'crime-does-not-pay' European heist caper pits mastermind safe-cracker Kirk Douglas against his trapeze artist sidekick Giuliano Gemma as well as his former Teutonic criminal underworld boss Wolfgang Preiss. "Goliath and the Sins of Babylon" director Michele Lupo's suspenseful yarn boasts intrigue, betrayal, and a demolition-derby car chase in Hamburg, Germany, as our hero sets out to pull another one of those formulaic fool-proof last jobs. "Un uomo da rispettare" benefits from the terrific widescreen cinematography of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" lenser Tonino Delli Colli and his use of 'Dutch' tilt angles. Composer Ennio Morricone contributes a minimalist orchestral score while Lupo relies on Mozart's Symphony 40 in two scenes. The twist is that our anti-heroic protagonist stages one robbery but plans to be caught for another robbery so as throw the German police and the villains off the scent. Naturally, nothing goes as planned in this ingenious but familiar caper. Like Richard Brooks' crime caper "Dollars" (1971), Lupo's film focuses on a bank that contain ultra-sophisticated security systems to safeguard their assets."Un uomo da rispettare" opens with marked police cars rampaging around the city while Detective Hoffman (Reinhard Kolldehoff of "Shout at the Devil") transports convicted career criminal Steve Wallace (Kirk Douglas of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") home to his wife Anna (Florinda Bolkan of "The Last Valley") after having served three years in prison. No sooner does the police car leave Wallace in front of his house than a carload of thugs cruise up. One of the ruffians informs Wallace that their boss, Miller (Wolfgang Preiss of "Raid on Rommel"), wants to talk to him. Reluctantly, Wallace accompanies them to see the well-heeled Miller in his huge office above a casino. Miller surrounds himself with an array of electronic gadgets to present his proposition for a heist with a million dollar payday. "I've got a job only you can do," he explains. "Now, listen carefully, you must knock out this alarm system. It's called 'Big Ben.' If it goes off, the whole city can hear it." Miller shows Wallace the vault on the top floor where the International Insurance Company has a cool million. "Now I know you can handle this safe, Steve, but Big Ben is the problem. The buzzing of a fly, a footstep, a deep breath is enough to trip the alarm." Miller pauses and then observes in an effort to entice Wallace. "Nobody has ever thought of it before." Wallace refuses flatly to pull the job for Miller. Before he worked for Miller, Wallace never encountered trouble. He wound up serving three years in prison when he did his first job for Miller. Nevertheless, Wallace tours the building and finds the edifice decked out with surveillance galore. He heads up to the top floor to snoop around but the disembodied voice of a woman interrupts him. He tells her that he has an appointment with Mr. Schmitt. The woman at a central control desk tells him that Schmitt's office is located on the second floor. Miller's rough-hewn henchman (Romano Puppo of "Death Rides A Horse") spots him leaving the building. He tries to persuade Wallace to see Miller again. Wallace refuses. While they are talking, a young man in an old jalopy, Marco (Giuliano Gemma), pulls up behind the henchman and honks at him. The two tangle in a rough and tumble fight with Marco demonstrating his agility. Miller's man brandishes a pistol. Wallace intervenes and knocks the gun out of the thug's fist.Wallace and Marco become fast friends as a result of this chance encounter. Wallace convinces Anna he can steal millions without being held accountable if he stages one robbery but takes the fall for another lesser robbery. If everything goes according to plan, Wallace calculates that--under German law--he will only serve 18 months from robbing a pawn shop. Unfortunately, Marco relies too heavily on his switchblade knife. Earlier, Wallace warns Marco sternly about this predilection. Director Lupo does a good job of staging the International Insurance safe-cracking job. Wallace decides to pull the job in the afternoon rather than at night. He slips into the building just after it has closed and looks like just another businessman with a bag that contains his instruments. Meantime, Anna makes appropriate phone calls at the precise moments to distract the uniformed guards while our hero sets up an array of gadgets to warn him when the guards are making their rounds. He uses Mozart music to skillfully distract the 'Big Ben' alarm system. Furthermore, after he gains access to the vault room, Wallace sprinkles powder on the push-buttons that must be punched according to a sequence to raise the circular vault out of the floor. He uses the powder to determine which buttons have fingerprints on them. Pretty savvy!!! Unfortunately, the best laid plans go awry when poor Marco kills the guard. You'd think after his knock down, drag-out brawl with Miller's henchman that Marco could have beaten the guard and left him unconscious. That isn't the point. The guard must be found down and at the last moment so that it comes as a complete surprise to Wallace."Un uomo da rispettare" is one of those crime caper films made after the demise of the Production Code. Earlier, Hollywood as well as European films would never allow criminals to escape with their ill-gotten gains. This would constituted a prescription for anarchy. Filmmakers could not make such a radical, anti-status-quo statement. The idea that 'crime could pay' would have been considered unethical! Cleverly, however, Lupo and scenarists Roberto Leoni, Franco Bucceri, Mino Roli, and Nico Ducci create suspense by letting Wallace get away with one robbery, only to be nabbed for another one! After all, this is a testament to Wallace's brilliance as a safe-cracker. The slam-bang car chase between Marco and Miller's lieutenant around Hamburg is amusing.

To insure some box office for this film released in America as Master Touch, Kirk Douglas was added to this Italian-German production filmed in and around Hamburg. I'm sure that Douglas did this one for the European vacation he was going to get. Master Touch is your average caper film that has elements of other films like Bullitt, The Asphalt Jungle and Topkapi. But it doesn't glide into the different moods of these films, it rather lurches uncomfortably.Kirk is a master safe-cracker who's just returned from a stretch in the joint. It's never really explained why this American is operating in Germany, so I assume it was a German prison. Wolfgang Preiss, a syndicate boss for whom he was doing a job when he was caught wants him for another caper. Douglas turns him down flat, but Preiss won't take no for an answer.In the meantime though he's pinched for cash so what to do, but back to the old trade and he decides to pull the job that Preiss offered on his own. He teams up with young Giuliano Gemma, a young circus performer who he saw best one of Preiss's hoods in a fight. In the meantime wife Florinda Bolkan pleads with Kirk to go straight.The best parts of Master Touch are devoted to the robbery and it is here the film most resembles Topkapi. The robbery sequences show that Kirk indeed had a Master Touch.What he didn't have is good judgment in people and that leads to a climax somewhat reminiscent of The Asphalt Jungle. I'm not about to give away any endings.Master Touch will never make anyone's top 10 list of Kirk Douglas films. Good in spots it still leaves quite a bit to be desired. But Kirk's fans around the world will like it.

There's a lot of other, similar, better foreign heist movies from this period, including the French AND HOPE TO DIE, and the Italian LAST CHANCE which I both found much more interesting than this work.The main thing this one has going for it is once-huge American star Kirk Douglas in a very meaty central role as a super-suave master thief akin to Clooney's character in the recent "Ocean's 11" series. The supporting cast is also good, though underused, with Gemma as a trapeze artist who Douglas tries to recruit into the life of thievery. Wolfgang Preiss (the guy who always plays Nazi bad guys in war movies) plays the main mob boss with Romano Puppo in a satisfying role as his head thug. Puppo and Gemma have numerous fight and chase scenes which are fun to watch but add absolutely nothing to the plot. Speaking of plot, this one conveniently glazes over all the details of the heist, except on how Douglas deals with the security system's sound recorder. His preparations don't appear to be particularly well informed yet he seems unswervingly confident about the whole thing. Hmmm....He also has a hot girlfriend/wife/lover/whatever Florinda Bolkan... who repeatedly tells him NOT to go through with the heist or she will leave him. These assertions make absolutely no impact on Douglas, who is single-minded in his pursuit of a big score... and then he is surprised later by all the double-crosses.It's worth tracking down, but not exactly the most cerebral crime caper from the period. A little more realism would have done this film an immeasurable service.

It may interest some to know that the score was composed by spaghetti-western and crime flick master Ennio Morricone. For some reason this goes unlisted on the DVD I own but is stated on the beginning credits (and the IMDb file).The scoring often follows a somewhat formulaic approach that has been taken to quite a few of these films (i.e. recapitulate the theme endlessly), but there are high points. An example would be long scene preceding the film's conclusion, when Wallace is running through a coal factory.The film itself is fairly entertaining, if not for the antiquated technologies regarded as cutting edge, and Douglas' sharp suits. Features some fairly hairy car-chases esp. considering the lack of special effects but long (and decidedly cheesy) romantic interludes with Anna.Not spoiling ANYTHING, the movie actually has a great twist and is fairly suspenseful as the characters plan to execute the biggest heist in town.