Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The original novel written by Gerald A. Browne is a masterpiece, an immediate classic, but it was completely ruined by this lousy film. First of all, the screenplay was horrible! How come you'd use the leading role in this novel, Chesser, played by Charles Grodin, to narrate almost every segment of this film, used him to describe what's going on and what he felt. It made this film like Chesser have become the 1st person in his memoir to talk about what he'd encountered for his revenge and heist against 11 Harrowhouse. We are watching a film instead of listening to an audio recording. What a lousy and lazy arrangement this stupid screenplay was. And then, the director seemed to be a moron who just lazily followed the script and shot the picture as it was. What a stupid moron!Secondly, signing up Charles Grodin to play the protagonist was the 2nd worse thing. This guy was not a good actor, but a deadbeat 2-tier actor with a protruding lower chin and lower lip over his upper lip, in addition to his facial features, eyes, nose, eyebrows, mouth (the lower lip overbites the upper lip) all squeezed together to the center that limited his expressions to the least. What we saw was an unwelcoming face like a poorly designed mask. He in this film just looked like a deadbeat, passionless zombie. So making Maren, played by Candice Bergen, to love him without any reservation was just so impossible to swallow. Gerald A. Browne always made his heroines in his novels a headstrong, iron-willed, smart and tough ladies, never gave a damn to almost anything, a female far superior to her counterparts, i.e., either their boyfriends or husbands. All the fantastic and amazing heists were almost carried through by their female intelligence and abnormally high I.Q. Candice Bergen to play Maren was a pretty good cast but partnered with the lousy Charles Grodin was just a unmatchable waste. What a shame. James Mason played the important inside man who suffered terminal cancer was a good cast job, but again, the lousy script didn't allow him to show more of his talent.During the final car chase, so many bullets hit the van, but none of them even hit the rear tires. The chase cars explosions were just laughable. Riding horses to chase high speed car....Are you kidding me?!If compares this film with the other film, "Green Ice", also adapted from Mr. Browne's novel, the latter was far better than this 11 Harrowhouse. All the ingredients were there both in the novel and the film, the budget based upon what we've seen in this film, would be also quite sufficient, but it's just like the main theme in this film, about Diamonds, this film looked just like a poorly cut diamond, making it worthless.

Charles Grodin is dryly disengaged throughout this sleepy comic caper, which he co-adapted from the book by Gerald A. Browne. An American thief hopes to rob Great Britain's clearing house of its diamonds, but both Grodin and accomplice/girlfriend Candice Bergen are so lethargic they fade into the woodwork. A wily supporting cast (including James Mason, John Gielgud and Trevor Howard) enlivens the picture considerably, but Aram Avakian's airy direction is practically non-existent. The film looks like it was cheaply-made, with poor editing and muddy cinematography, and yet a smugness hangs over the proceedings (as if it were a great inside joke). A flop at the box-office--the roach on the poster probably didn't help--it was quickly reissued under the title, "Anything For Love". ** from ****

I saw Harrowhouse on TV many years ago and loved it for it's period atmosphere, modest intrigue, topped off with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek narration by Grodin. Where the B-grade plot and action fell short, the dry humour of the narration supplied irony and maybe self-parody. Renting it on VHS many years later, it took some time to figure why it fell so flat - the VHS version had no narration, and presented as merely a sincere but inadequate attempt at thriller/drama genre.I'd be curious to know which version each reviewer saw - the 'vanilla' but one-dimensional (original?) version, or the narrated and somewhat quirky TV version. I'm hoping that the narrated version eventually appears on DVD - it's on my list.

Charles Grodin, who co-wrote is almost always self-conscious, and it's self-consciousness that ultimately sinks this otherwise entertaining diamond heist caper. The excellent starring and supporting cast can't quite prevent the audience from being confused as to whether this is supposed to be a smart parody or a complicated thriller. The director was an excellent film editor of "Jazz On A Summer's Day", "Lilith", "The Miracle Worker", etc