Lassiter
The Magnificent Thief

This was the second of two period adventure pictures Tom Selleck made after becoming an international star with Magnum PI that felt like he was trying (without much success) to show what a great Indiana Jones he would have been. Selleck plays the title character, an American safe cracker living in London with his girlfriend and sometime accomplice (Jane Seymour). After being nabbed by an irascible Scotland Yard inspector (Bob Hoskins) and a wimpy FBI agent (Joe Regalbuto), the gentleman jewel thief is blackmailed into breaking into the German Embassy to steal $10M in Nazi diamonds from a lascivious German countess (Lauren Hutton). TV director Roger Young, who helmed the Magnum pilot, makes his feature film debut here and does a lousy job of breathing any life into David Taylor's leaden screenplay. It's hard to make a dull film from any story set in pre-WWII London and even harder to make a boring heist movie, but these folks and Godfather producer Albert S. Ruddy sure found a way. This came from Golden Harvest Productions, the Hong Kong company whose other English Language films include Selleck's first major star vehicle, High Road to China, and The Cannonball Run movies.

While Selleck is always an enjoyable screen presence and looks fantastic in these late-30s outfits, he always comes off as too lightweight to carry a movie. It's fun to see the usually refined Lauren Hutton as a crazed Nazi Mata Hari femme fatal, but when she and Lassiter hit the sheets after a lot of build-up, there's no on-screen sex scene, so we have no idea if her persona is genuine or just an act. We are treated to Jane Seymour's only nude scene in a movie, and it's a most tasteful one. Bob Hoskins is fun playing his usual funny, angry, diminutive yet imposing Brit, but you could see Hoskins play this type of character in half a dozen better movies from this period, just as you could watch thousands of superior heist pictures or movies about elegant cat burglars, and you could experience Selleck's easy charm anytime on TV.