Another strike-out from the inglorious film career of cigar-chewing mogul Sir Lew Grade. It took four writers to adapt Gerald Browne's novel about a giant emerald heist, but it's definitely a case of too many scribes spoiling the script. The settings are suitably luxurious but nothing in the film has any bearing on reality. Quite how the thieves expect to get away with using hot-air balloons to steal the jewels and then land on top of a skyscraper undetected, is just one of the film's many imponderables. The dialogue is stilted and arch and the acting of stars Ryan O'Neal, Omar Sharif and Anne Archer merely adequate. Ernest Day, fresh from being cameraman on the adventure film Sphinx, makes his debut here as a director but fails to instil any sense of pace. It was to be his only cinema feature.


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