Silver Bears (1977)

Director: Ivan Passer

Writers: Paul Erdman, Peter Stone

Composer: Claude Bolling

Starring: Michael Caine, Cybill Shepherd, Louis Jourdan, Stephane Audran, David Warner, Tom Smothers, Martin Balsam, Jay Leno, Tony Mascia, Charles Gray, Joss Ackland

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They were after silver and they struck gold.

Plot: Financial wizard "Doc" Fletcher (Caine) is sent by crime boss Joe Fiore (Balsam) to buy a bank in Switzerland in order to more easily launder their profits. When he arrives, Fletcher finds that the bank, acquired by his associate Prince di Siracusa (Jourdan), consists of some shabby offices above a restaurant. To make up for this, the Prince suggests that Fletcher invests in a silver mine owned by Shireen and Agha Firdausi (Audran and Warner). This solves one problem, but the mine also attracts the attention of some of the most powerful people in the silver business. Fletcher must pull out all his wheeler-dealing skills in order to keep hold of everything he's worked for, in the process romancing a banker's discontented wife (Shepherd).

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

What a cast, right?  Even if the flick were a lot worse it'd still be worth watching just to see all of these folks in one picture.  It's no surprise that they do a fine job.  The locations are all over the place; Vegas, London, Morocco and Switzerland.  It's stuff like that that makes you want to be a big time actor so you can get paid to travel the world in style.  Well, that and the money and chicks (or dudes).  The thing is with this movie, it's good but it never really takes off.  I sniffed something was afoot early on and that the story wasn't going to go where we were being led.  That happened but the little turns the film takes didn't have much weight so the consequences for the players didn't add up to much.  I didn't feel like the people I was rooting for were in any kind of danger (financially and situationally).  The end tidies up neatly but at no point did I suspect it wouldn't and that bothered me a little.  Cybill Shepherd must've been a second choice to Diane Keaton because she behaved and dressed just like her.