"Too Many Thieves" is the wrong name for this pretend-picture. Too Much Talk would be more apt. The characters simply never stop talking. Yak, yak, yak. Yak, yak, yak. Yak, yak, yak. Mighty boring, isn't it? Particularly when they've really got nothing of the slightest interest to say.
Peter Falk was never one of my favorite actors. Here he is particularly charmless. He seems to go out of his way to be deadly. Seeing Falk in action is like watching a slow-moving snail climbing the wall of a maximum security prison. True, the snail does finally - finally - make it to the top, only to take off with even less speed down the other side!
To make up for the lack of action, the photographer and set designer have chosen bloated background colors which literally smack the audience like a blow on the forehead. These gentlemen are not simply maladroit craftsmen or people who have no taste, but artists who have deliberately chosen the most jarring color combinations they could find.
No doubt they felt that these color combinations would keep an audience's eyes glued to the theater or TV screen. And the colors no doubt looked appropriate and even quite fascinating on the studio's comparatively small screen. But when the film is projected on a large theater screen -- which is where I saw it -- , Too Many Thieves is not just a marathon bore for the ears, it's a downright painful experience for the eyes.
P.S. According to some sources, the movie was originally telecast in the USA in 1966 as two episodes (entitled "The Greatest Game") .
Peter Falk was never one of my favorite actors. Here he is particularly charmless. He seems to go out of his way to be deadly. Seeing Falk in action is like watching a slow-moving snail climbing the wall of a maximum security prison. True, the snail does finally - finally - make it to the top, only to take off with even less speed down the other side!
To make up for the lack of action, the photographer and set designer have chosen bloated background colors which literally smack the audience like a blow on the forehead. These gentlemen are not simply maladroit craftsmen or people who have no taste, but artists who have deliberately chosen the most jarring color combinations they could find.
No doubt they felt that these color combinations would keep an audience's eyes glued to the theater or TV screen. And the colors no doubt looked appropriate and even quite fascinating on the studio's comparatively small screen. But when the film is projected on a large theater screen -- which is where I saw it -- , Too Many Thieves is not just a marathon bore for the ears, it's a downright painful experience for the eyes.
P.S. According to some sources, the movie was originally telecast in the USA in 1966 as two episodes (entitled "The Greatest Game") .