646f9e108c Two men kidnap a girl off the streets, take her to a beach house owned by a drug-addicted stewardess, and hold her for ransom. Things start to go wrong for a group of criminals after they kidnap a young heiress and hold her for ransom at a beach house in France. Fighting among the co-conspirators boils over shortly after the ransom is picked up, leading to a violent end for most. Wondering through the list of &quot;free movies&quot; available from my cable provider I stumbled on this rarely screened suspense film from the late 60&#39;s about an unstable group of kidnappers whose plot to snatch a rich heiress go completely wrong. The film has a slow, deliberate pace that is evident from the opening credits. It is not surprising that the younger generation brought up on MTV and comic book action sequels and prequels would be so bored by a film that takes it&#39;s time in unspooling its simple plot. The picture was made in a different era when directors could actually present a vision and let the audience decide if they liked it; not a focus group or committee of studio executives. American films reached a certain creative peak in the late 60&#39;s and early 70&#39;s before the blockbuster knocked everything else off the playing film. This is a serious movie for people that are looking a little deeper than the surface for enrichment. This is a movie that causes you to FEEL something. You may feel bored, hypnotized or energized but you won&#39;t walk away feeling nothing.<br/><br/>The performances are all strong, especially Brandoa &quot;chauffer&quot; that leads the gang. While the heavy (Richard Boone) may explain to the kidnap victim that &quot;we are all professional criminals&quot; they certainly don&#39;t act like it. Their desperation is evidentthe plot unravels.<br/><br/>The ending is much discussed (on this very site, for instance) but it is quite satisfying along the lines of Fritz Lang&#39;s &quot;The Woman In The Window&quot; but it is not an obvious copyit took me several hours to come up with the comparison. Seldom has a movie so wildly vacillated between being suspenseful and being irritating. It&#39;s about a kidnapping which goes wrong. In it, a chauffeur in Paris with a criminal record (Marlon Brando) reluctantly agrees to take part in the kidnapping for ransom of a young British heiress (Pamela Franklin), which is being masterminded by his good friend, a washed-up pickpocket (Jess Hahn). The girl will be held hostage at the English Channel home of a heroin-addicted stewardess (Rita Moreno), who is both Hahn&#39;s sister and Brando&#39;s girlfriend. Added to this motley group is a sadistic pimp (Richard Boone), whom Hahn brought in but Brando doesn&#39;t trust. The kidnapping goes well enough, but complications set in. A neighbor of the beach house is a French policeman. But even more importantly, the characters become increasingly mistrustful of each other while the captive is menaced by Boone, who is clearly a psychopathic predator. Of course, there is the inevitable climax when things go wrong at the last minute. The film alternates between crime drama and psychological drama, with a lot of chat and only a few action scenes. The talented actors and the nice scenery help make the film watchable until the end, in spite of the pretentious script. But then the entire story is undercut by one of the most stupid endings one could imagine, which could not possibly be more out of place. I had only grudgingly sat through this film because of the cast, only to have the rug yanked out from under me. It left me feeling betrayed.
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