Cinema: Gained Goods

On the other hand. Deadfall suggests that the cat-burglar genre may have only 998 lives. The star of the film is Michael Caine (Alfie, The Ipcress File), who has made a profitable career out of playing ingratiating, low-keyed bounders. This time, he plays an ingratiating, low-keyed jewel thief who creeps up on baubles and boudoirs with equal ingenuity. It is the kind of role that Caine can do in his sleep. The difficulty is that by now much of the audience may be tempted to doze along with him.

Emulating such meticulous metaphysicians of suspense as Graham Greene and John Le Carré, Writer-Director Bryan Forbes tried to turn a routine story about the last personal and professional adventures of a gentleman robber into an existential parable. Sadly, the material is too airy to bear the weight of Forbes’ meaningful silences and rambunctious camerawork. The arch dialogue is genuine tin (exhausted heroine to Caine: “Have you done it very often in strange rooms with girls who have husbands?”). In the best anti-hero tradition, Caine dies by bungling his last job, losing the girl and getting shot in the back while dangling off a roof. For the viewer, this comes more as a relief than a surprise.