A FINE PAIR (Italian title literally: ROB YOUR NEIGHBOUR)

US, 1968, 113 minutes, Colour.
Rock Hudson, Claudia Cardinale, Leon Askin.
Directed by Francesco Masselli.

This is a conventional caper story. Stars Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale had appeared successfully in Philip Dunne's thriller, Blindfold. Their next teaming together in this Italian made film is not so successful.

The film has an American and Italian cast. It opens in New York, focuses on Rock Hudson as a respectable detective. He is seduced by Esmeralda, Claudia Cardinale quite attractive. He discovers she is a thief. She wants to put jewels back. He is gradually drawn into a plot for further robberies. These are quite entertainingly done in the conventional manner. The romance is ordinary in its way. There is an odd character played by Tomas Milian, an addict and a fence.

The material continues with conventional pursuit of the thieves. There are all kinds of plants and double plants and eventually the thieves have been robbed of the jewels by the Italian police. The film rarely rises above the level of routine - but it illustrates the kind of spaghetti robbery film that the Italians can make, imitating the American style and using American stars. There is a curiosity point - when hero and heroine are having breakfast in Rome, they look out the window and newsreel footage of a visit of Pope Paul VI to the Italian suburbs is incorporated as if the hero and heroine are looking at him. It is not often that the Pope gets this kind of showing - without billing! An ordinary addition to a frequently used genre.