The Master Touch

The Master Touch, with Kirk Douglas
The Master Touch, with Kirk Douglas

The Master Touch was a high profile heist film from the reliable Michele Lupo. Its big coup was in managing to get Kirk Douglas, a top American star who had previously had little involvement with Italian cinema, to play the protagonist, Steve Wallace, a gentleman robber back on the streets after a short spell in jail. Tempted out of retirement by the prospect of breaking into an apparently impregnable vault stocked up with millions of dollars – natch – he hooks up with a young trapeze artist, Marco (Giuliano Gemma). Their plan is to set Wallace up as the prime suspect for another robbery while he’s actually breaking into the aforementioned vault. Things, however, don’t work out as planned.

This is a really enjoyable film, much more serious and gloomy than you’d expect from the normally lightweight Lupo. It’s got some great cinematography and a low-key but effective Morricone score; the central heist is well handled and there’s an excellent car chase through the streets of Hamburg. Kirk Douglas looks very dapper and doesn’t seem as embarrassed as some American imports did – he’d return to Italy for Holocaust 2000 – and there’s good support from Gemma and Florinda Bolkan.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

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