Michael Caine plays a minor crook who inherits from a dead pal (Rossano Brazzi) the idea and key plan of a heist for landing a haul of $4 million in gold ingots from a security van in Turin, Italy. Scheme involves an elaborate way of throwing the Turin traffic into a colossal, chaotic tangle on which the robbery and getaway depends.
The crime is bankrolled and masterminded by Noel Coward, a top criminal, from a London jail which he virtually controls with sybaratic authority. Caine’s assembled gang of crooks seem a bumbling crowd, unfitted to take on the Mafia, which is naturally taking a menacing interest in the scheme.
The cast does its stuff to good effect. Coward, as the highly patriotic, business-like master crook, brings all his imperturbable sense of irony and comedy to his role.
