Wonderful character development!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The first must-see film of the year.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

There's a reason Hollywood keeps making heist movies decade after decade: people always watch them! Well, I do, anyway. In The Hot Rock, Robert Redford and George Segal join up to steal a diamond from a museum that Moses Gunn wants to return to his people in Africa. In true 1970s fashion, the film turns into a heist-gone-wrong comedy, and every time the team of robbers tries to take the diamond, an unexpected glitch ruins everything and sends them back to the drawing board.There are some pretty funny gags—my favorite is Robert Redford's "that's good and that's bad" speech—and during the suspenseful scenes you're able to relax a bit because no one ever gets hurt in a comedy. It's not the best heist movie you'll ever watch, but it's far from the worst, so if you think George Segal is funny or you're looking for some blond eye candy in your next crime comedy, rent The Hot Rock for a few laughs.

Crooks steal a precious gem from a museum, but complications arise. It appears the filmmakers thought they were making something clever and funny, but the end product is rather anemic. The heist scene is very routine. Subsequent acquisitions of a big rig and a helicopter receive big buildups, suggesting some clever usage of the vehicles, but nothing happens. In fact, about five minutes of screen time is spent on the uneventful helicopter ride. The plot device used to gain access to a safety deposit box is incredibly lame. The film is mildly amusing at times but falls far short of expectations given the initial premise. Redford and Segal try but can't rise above the uninspired script.

The Hot Rock has a soft spot in my heart because the area of Brooklyn where a lot of the film was shot, I know very well, Eastern Parkway, The Botanical Gardens and most of all The Brooklyn Museum I know very well from years of living in the Borough of homes and churches. The Brooklyn Museum is where the elusive Hot Rock resides or at least where it first resides.Robert Redford is released from prison and his brother-in-law George Segal is there to greet him. As Redford says to warden Graham Jarvis there ain't no chance in hell he's going straight. Straight into another caper that Segal has lined up for him with Ron Leibman and Paul Sand.The amiable team is hired by African ambassador Moses Gunn from some fictional central African country to get a national treasure, a rather large diamond on display at the Brooklyn Museum. They do steal the diamond, but through an incredible combination of circumstances have to plan and execute four different break-ins before The Hot Rock is in their hands. Redford and Segal display a good chemistry, as good as the fabled co-starring chemistry of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Why they were not heralded as a buddy combination is beyond me.Stealing the film in whatever scenes they are in are shyster attorney Zero Mostel and his doofus of a son, Paul Sand. In the first caper at the museum, Sand gets caught and what he does with the diamond sets up the entire rest of the film.As for Zero we find he's an attorney with absolutely no scruples whatsoever, the kind they make excellent lawyer jokes about. But he does give us some excellent laughs.The Hot Rock is something on the order of an American domestic version of Topkapi. The laughs in it are good and strong, although some of the Seventies fashions make me wince. Despite that the film holds up well today. I'm surprised no one is thinking of remaking this one.

The Hot Rock might not be the pinnacle of cinematic greatness, but it's a well made and funny little crime caper, and I'm sure anyone with a mind to see it will enjoy it! The film is clearly not meant to be deep or thought provoking in any sense and was obviously made just for entertainment, and in that respect it succeeds admirably. The film is best described as a heist movie and only really has one original idea; that being the fact that the thing the criminals are stealing in this movie evades them constantly, leading to the planning of several heists. There's not really an idea other than that in the film, but it's stretched out nicely across a few well worked heists. Our main character is a man named Dortmunder. He's fresh out of jail and already being approached by an old contact wanting him to help pull another job. The job in question involves a team put together by Dortmunder stealing a huge diamond from a museum. After putting a plan together and pulling it off, they end losing the diamond and have to steal it again...and again and again.As you would expect considering the plot, the film doesn't take itself completely seriously and the plot is played out by a number of entertaining characters and in good humour. The film is not as stylish as some other crime films and the focus is put more on the execution of the numerous heists rather than the style of the film. The heists themselves get sillier as the film goes along; eventually building into a highly unlikely way of stealing a diamond. The film benefits from a strong cast, headed by the charismatic Robert Redford, who manages to lead the film effectively despite running on autopilot for most of it. Redford gets good support from the likes of George Segal and Paul Sand, but it's Zero Mostel who really steals the show as the unlikely villain of the piece. The plot moves along at a steady pace and the film fits it's one hundred minute running time very well in that it doesn't ever become boring, Even though certain parts of the film are hard to take seriously, it's easy to just sit back and enjoy it; and overall, if you're looking for an entertaining way to spend some time; you could do a lot worse than this.