Diamantenlady

Andy Hammon (Donald Sutherland) steals a diamond necklace from a criminal type. He's a newly hired mechanic working for Paul Booth. He gets fired after flirting with the bosses' daughter Paula Booth (Jennifer O'Neill). They get into a car chase and he offers her the $3M necklace. It turns out that the Booths are fences working with Peter Brinker (Eric Braeden). Police detective Ford Pierce (Robert Duvall) is frustrated with Andy Hammon who is actually working with the insurance companies looking to collect his 10%.

It's a lot of Florida. It's a lot of sunshine and water. It's trying to be a stylish thriller. It seems to be spending a chunk of change. Sutherland seems to be playing around with the material. It has the potential but it ends up as a muddle. There are questionable choices all the way through the movie. I don't know why they are measuring the jewels in a moving RV other than injecting some unnecessary action. I don't know why the plot goes from Florida to Chicago. I'm never certain what is happening at any one time. I look up director Tom Gries and am not surprised that he is mostly a TV director. He's trying to give the visual style but doesn't have the skills to pull it off. That's the movie in a nutshell. It's trying to be a flashy big budget thriller but it doesn't have it.