Brilliant and touching

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Un Uomo Da Rispettare (or The Master Touch, as it is known in the English-speaking world) is a German-Italian crime caper which finds a big Hollywood star in the lead role. This was a common ploy with European films of the 60s and 70s, presumably with the aim of securing a wider market for their film… John Mills, Roger Moore, George Kennedy, Richard Burton, Oliver Reed and many other established talents all lent their names to one or more of these Euro-trash movies at some point or other. Here, the big name in question is Kirk Douglas, playing against type as a career criminal with his eyes fixed on one final score.Just released from a three year jail sentence, thief Steve Wallace (Kirk Douglas) heads back home to reunite with his wife Anna (Florinda Bolkan). Before he gets there, he is accosted by crimelord Muller (Wolfgang Preiss), who tries to persuade Steve to do a job for him – the near-impossible burglary of a million dollars worth of insurance money from a high-tech building in Hamburg. Steve refuses, pointing out that he always did well enough working for himself, and was only jailed in the first place after disastrously attempting to do a job for Muller. However, Steve is secretly intrigued at the prospect of going after this huge prize. He enlists a circus trapeze artist named Marco (Giuliano Gemma) and persuades him to carry out a small robbery at a local pawn shop, carried out at exactly the same moment that he plans to steal the fortune in insurance money. Steve's plan is to take the rap for the pawn shop job – a mere 18 months in jail – while in actual fact he has really carried out the much bigger insurance money robbery. Neither Muller, nor the cops, will realise he is responsible for the bigger crime and the money will be waiting for him when he is released from prison. But can he really trust his new partner in crime? And will his long-suffering wife wait another 18 months to be with her man?Although it contains an intriguing idea – deliberately getting caught for a small crime to disguise a large one – Un Uomo Da Rispettare is generally a lacklustre and disappointing affair. There's a good car chase halfway through and Douglas is in decent form as the villain, but apart from these scant pickings the film doesn't amount to much. The characters are thinly developed and hard to care for; Morricone's score is unexceptional (by Morricone standards, anyway); the robbery itself lacks any true sense of tension due to a confused and under-developed build-up. There are far better examples of these crime caper-style films out there… this one is for genre aficionados and Kirk Douglas completists only.

Good: A superb car chase (worth the price of admission – they don't make them like that any more), some great fights (again, I don't see that kind of action in modern films), a decent heist, and a couple plot twists I didn't expect. Nice control of camera depth of field. This really could have been a great movie.Bad: The unappealing characters just sucked the joy out of this movie. Nobody's likable. I didn't like Douglas. I didn't like his wife. I didn't like the circus performer. There's nobody to root for. Also, after the final plot twist, you can predict the rest of the movie and by then I just didn't care.5 stars for the car chase and fights.

Michele Lupo directed this Morricone—scored Eurothriller made after all the precepts of the art; the cast is _prima—Douglas, Gemma and Mrs. Bolkan (a '70s lean supple _cutie _hottie, in case anyone is rude enough to inquire …).Genre—wise, THE MASTER TOUCH is a very straightforward gritty caper. The regular elements of a Eurothriller are on display—streetwise characters, car—chases, fistfights (between Gemma, here a circus acrobat, and his nemesis). A good caper functions on the diversity of the crooks involved—e.g., Gabin and Delon; or, Pitt, Clooney, etc.; or, here, Douglas and Gemma.The score is scarce but very atmospheric—dramatic and creepy, enhancing the suspense. This chilling music is, as mentioned previously, Morricone's.The denouement scene on the waterfront is both exciting, awesome, and iconic, coining some iconic frames for all three protagonists—Douglas, deceived; Gemma, scared; and Mrs. Bolkan, so cool, a genuine noir woman. The names allude to Douglas playing an American, and Mrs. Bolkan, a Hispanic babe, though the action is set in Germany.Gemma was, of course, a '70s Italian (anachronistic) cross between a Pitt and a Willis—anyway, smoother than Willis and less talented than Pitt ….Pals, if you are as addicted to Eurothrillers as I believe you are, then there's no further need to add that these flicks are distinguished by a singular gritty sharpness, their melodrama is sharp and singularly appealing. I have done a few entries here on this genre—movies with Nero, Delon ….

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.