Seven Thieves

An old professor, thrown out of his university years earlier, plans the last big job of his life: emptying the vault of the casino at Monte Carlo. He brings in a skilled thief he has known for years and then completes the team, which includes a dancer, a doctor and someone who can supply information from inside. The plan is built minute by minute and the night works. The real subject is not the robbery but what the money is supposed to mean. It belongs to the heist cycle of the fifties and sixties, though the ending does not arrive at the genre's usual sense of triumph. The professor played by Edward G. Robinson does the job not to take the money but to prove once more that he is clever. Rod Steiger, Joan Collins and Eli Wallach fill out the cast. Henry Hathaway assembles the mechanics patiently and draws the tension from timing rather than speed. The black-and-white photography makes Monte Carlo look cold rather than glittering.