Back-loaded adapted screenplay from Charles Willeford & Scott B. Smith puts a dark spin on an old standard, the one about the painter who fakes his own death, goes into hiding incognito and watches as his work soars in value now that he can’t produce anymore; suddenly a sellers’ market. SPOILERS! Here, it’s not the painter (Donald Sutherland) manipulating his output for profit, but art critic Claes Bang taking advantage of the painter’s age and frailty, especially as he’s famously already lost his old work to fire and only has a small cache of new canvases as his legacy. The idea: win his trust; destroy all but one of his new canvases, and end up owning the only original painting left intact, now worth millions. (It's as if Patricia Highsmith were doing an iteration for the Talented Mr. Ripley.) Ultra-rich art collector Mick Jagger (of all people) might be behind the scheme, while recent pickup Elizabeth Debicki is an unknowing complication who can be used to entice Sutherland into opening his clam shell of a personality and locked up studio. But once they get inside, they hardly find what they expect. Without spur-of-the-moment murder and forgery, plans and profit certain to be forfeit. It’s a clever idea, but director Giuseppe Capotondi can’t invigorate a script that lolls around over its first two acts, then does a poor job cramming in and explaining the caper mechanics toward the end. He covers (or is it uncovers) with sex (some) and nudity (lots). Until by the end, characters & events reduced to mere literary devices .
WATCH THS, NOT THAT/LINK: Imagine GAMBIT/’66 with all the fun sucked out of it. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/06/gambit-1966.html
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