A good old heist movie will always be a very entertaining movie idea. If you combine this with a duo as strong as Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine at the top of their game you can only get a great film.
An English cat burglar needs a Eurasian dancer’s help to pull off the perfect heist, but even the most foolproof schemes have a way of backfiring.
Shirley MacLaine was one of the biggest movie star of the moment, already nominated for three Oscars (she would eventually win the Oscar for ‘Terms of Endearment in 1983) for her three most famous films (The Appartement, Irma la Douce and Some Came Running) she was the natural lead for the film and still she doesn’t speak in the first fifteen minutes of the film, in one of the most original moments in a heist film. Michael Caine was starting the get the recognition he deserved after the success of ‘Zulu’, ‘The Ipcress File’ and ‘Alfie’ (for which he was nominated for an Oscar, which he finaly won in1986 for ‘ Hannah and Her Sisters’). After ‘Alfie’, the gates of Hollywood opened up for Caine and Shirley MacLaine invited him to play the lead in ‘Gambit’. The director Ronald Neame was already a very accomplished writer and directed before this film, Judy Garland in her ultimate performance: ‘I Could Go On Singing ‘and also the film explain the daring operation Mincemeat in ‘The Man Who Never Was’. Herbert Lom is the standout in the film playing the richest man alive and trying to outsmart the two main characters.
The film mocks all the stereotypes of a perfect robbery and integrates much more subtility in the mix,. The film is very modern for the time but still keeps all the characteristics of a sixties movie, with lots of colors, exotic locations and characters and a very comedic tone.
The film was nominated for a few technical Oscars which they deserved.
A remake of the film was done in 2012 starring Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz and Alan Rickman but the film wasn’t as good as the original which is a shame because the Coen brothers worked on a version of the script which was not the final draft.
