Love Among Thieves

The class and style of Audrey Hepburn and Robert Wagner make this an enjoyable lark. The plot and writing are weak, but Hepburn's smile and style are captivating. Wagner obviously enjoy being Hepburn's foil - and flirting with her in the process.

Audrey Hepburn was in very few films in the 80's. This was the worst of the lot. At the start Audrey steals some treasures from a museum and is later inolved with a host of characters that have some interest in her loot. The acting was mediocre. The plot was predictable and boring.

I enjoy this movie more each time I watch it. It at it has all of the elements that make for a good romantic comedy.

The main characters - portrayed on the one hand by the inimitable Audrey Hepburn and on the other by the still sleek Robert Wagner -are as lively and believable as ever. We are given as a bonus the added abilities of Jerry Orbach as the mysterious bad - good guy.

All of the elements of the classic romantic comedy are in evidence here.

There is a great cast. There is incisive and clever dialogue. There is the element of danger without being so dramatic that one forgets that one is watching a comedy. There is the hate / love relationship that develops, with the viewers permission, into a love / hate and then a love only relationship.

Best yet it is all folded up in the course of an almost unbelievable story. Surely the mark of a good Romance.

LOVE AMONG THIEVES is by and large the last bonafide Audrey Hepburn film, much to the chagrin of many fans who, depending on their opinion of her later work, usually feel her swan song should have been ROBIN AND MARIAN in 1976. I myself rather liked THEY ALL LAUGHED, the film Hepburn made six years before this one, so I do not entirely agree that she made nothing worthy of her after the 70s. That being said, LOVE AMONG THIEVES does leave a lot of be desired.

The story is unabashedly light and airy. It clearly acts as a homage movie, referencing lots of Hepburn's former work, particularly CHARADE. In fact, the plot lifts a lot from CHARADE, even whole sections of dialogue, a gimmick that got old quickly. Unlike CHARADE, the movie does not balance out its romantic comedy with suspense well; the villains are never particularly threatening. Sometimes, they're downright incompetent.

However, this movie is so unpretentious and even easygoing that it's hard to dislike it. Hepburn and Robert Wagner don't have the best romantic chemistry, but they play their roles well and with tongue firmly in cheek. Had Hepburn's last film been the dreadful BLOODLINE, I would lament. In that regard, we are lucky. I would have have preferred her final film been something more clever or grand, but as far as that goes, LOVE AMONG THIEVES, slight and silly as it is, will have to do.

Audrey Hepburn's next to last project was this TV movie which is something of a homage to one of her classic screen roles from Charade. There's also a bit of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps involved here as well. Although I think Hepburn and her leading man Robert Wagner covered a bit more ground than Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll did.

Love Among Thieves begins with Audrey Hepburn joining the ranks of thieves by pulling off as instructed a caper where she steals three priceless Faberge eggs from a display case at a San Francisco museum. All as per instructions as they are the ransom for her kidnapped fiancé Patrick Bauchau.

The chase takes her to old Mexico and back to San Francisco where there seems always to be an ever helpful Robert Wagner constantly rescuing her and always with a different story about himself. There's also a nasty tempered man chasing them played by Jerry Orbach. His role model seems to be Wile E. Coyote. A bit of Tim Kazurinsky's Sweetchuk from the Police Academy films thrown in as well.

Hepburn and Wagner have some of that nice romantic and comedic banter that you never see any more in films. Of course we do find out exactly who's who and what their agendas are in the end. As if Audrey's would be anything but good.

Love Among Thieves is one for nostalgia lovers like me.