The Thief Who Came to Dinner

Look, this is 2010 or later. You've checked out Serpico, Mean Streets, The Godfather---all the obvious choices. But I just watched The Thief Who Came to Dinner last night, and it made me realize that there's probably a lot I've been missing. A lot of terrific movies that were maybe ignored or under-estimated when they first came out (for some reason or another) that are actually pretty great.

Let me put it to you this way. if you're a guy (or a gal) with a sort of boring job, who's occasionally fantasized about chucking it all and just becoming a professional jewel thief---this is the movie you want to live in. Ryan O'Neal is handsome and charming, Jacqueline Bisset is beautiful, and Warren Oates is very Warren Oates-y. The story(by Walter hill, based on a novel) works, and you won't be left hanging by some typical early 70's drag ending (thank God)---I don't know what else to say. The Thief Who came to Dinner is a really good time. It should have made $100 million dollars in 1973. It's a tragedy (possible slight overstatement) that it didn't.

Ryan O'Neal was so clever and seductive in this movie, I wanted to go to bet with him too. The focal point of the movie is the fascinating love story -- not between O'Neal and Bisset or between O'Neal and Jill Clayburgh -- both of which were quite entertaining, but the cerebral symbiotic linkage between Warren Oates and O'Neal. This has to be Oates' best performance of all time. Young Ned Beatty and Charles Cioffi are very good --leading a quite capable supporting cast. Very enjoyable movie.

I have loved this movies for years and wish it were on DVD. Ryan O'Neal gives his career best performance as the amateur thief who decides that this way of life is more exciting than what he did before. The Houston location is interesting and the capers themselves are hair-raising. The addition of the chess motif and the relationship between Warren Oates and O'Neal was almost touching. The ending makes you see how much the O'Neal character liked the detective played by Oates.The film also contains one of my favorite lines of dialog as well. When Bissett asks O'Neal what it is like to rob a house, he answers :" It's like a heart attack with a lot of fear thrown in"

In 1973, the best chess programs running on the fastest supercomputers could barely play a passable game of chess, much less challenge a master level player such as the Austin Pendleton character would be (newspaper chess columnist for the Houston Chronicle).

Okay, what do you need to perfect or make a good movie about theivery? A strong plot or a good source to base it on. B.fleshed out and fun characters C.a fun storyline or D.all of the above. If you said all of the above, that's right. These are the central elements that makes "The Thief Who Came to Dinner", worth checking out. Okay, first off this a dated 70's film that will probably turn off most people, but if you don't take it seriously as it tries to be, it's worth it's running time. Ryan O'Neal stars as Webster McGee, a computer programmer who one day ups and quits his somewhat cushy job and becomes a burglar. McGee is a very cocky, fun-loving guy, who you wouldn't suspect as being someone who'd break into your home and steal things. That he does it with such precision, so much so that he has an investigator played by the late Warren Oates hot on his trail. While playing mind games with Oates, he falls in love with Laura (Jacqueline Bisset), who knows what he does and accepts him for it, which goes unexplained in the movie. Director Bud Yorkin does a very good job here directing from Walter Hill's adapted screenplay. But it if was tighter paced, it would've been a lot more fun. There are times where the film lags and it really feels as it's missing something. There are alot of nice and breezy sequences prefectly shot by Director of Photograph Phillip Lanthrop. Henry Mancini's score is absolutely fabulous and arguably one of his more underrated gems. A little more energy would've gone a long way with this one. On the whole, I'd recommend it for it's performances and definetly rooting for the Chess Burglar.