This film belongs to the top ten that the sixties decade provided us, a gritty heist movie without comedy. Admit that the Italian co productions of those years were mostly semi comedy topics, maybe not hilarious, but light hearted. Once again, we have Edward G Robinson involved in a major heist, remember him in THE SEVEN THIEVES, directed by Hank Hathaway, back in 1959. No realism here, only myth and excitement, a great film de genre, on the same scale as SEVEN GOLDEN MEN, but maybe more serious though. Casting over the top for this kind of feature. And what I like the most in this picture is that there is no ONLY, UNIQUE lead character, but a bunch of lead ones, and not played by super stars, not widely known actors. The most known : Adolfo Celli and Eddy Robinson have only supporting roles, and at the lowest level. The influence of RIFIFI, TOPKAPI, CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS is so obvious, for the heist itself, with no talk, and also the technological part of the preparation, with the alarm system and the safe. Rather dark story for this kind of topic. No light hearted for sure.
Review of Grand Slam
