This sounds as if it's going to be more exciting than it is: two mates, an inventor (homely Lino Ventura) and a dashing pilot (Alain Delon), team up with a beautiful sculptor (Joanna Shimkus) and go treasure hunting; they wind up looking for some treasure that resulted from people fleeing the disturbances in the Congo, making this one of the few movies to refer to that conflict. (The music score at times is reminiscent of Dark of the Sun).
There are two great action sequences - a shoot out on the boat, which results in Shimkus' expected death, and one at the end at this great abandoned fort. They're so well done it makes you wish there had been more of them. This is an oddly shaped movie, which spends most of its time being about three people hanging out together - the movie is almost half over before they hear about the missing treasure.
Until then it's Jules et Jim stuff with Ventura, Delon and Shimkus hanging out, all seemingly in love with each other but no one being romantic - and once you accept that it's quite enjoyable, with Ventura being heavyset and charismatic, like a large amount of French stars; Delon being handsome and sexy (he tries a beard in this and it suits him) and Shimkus, who I'd never heard of, being very sexy. The movie struggles to recover from her death; though the real romance here is between Delon and Ventura (this is as homoerotic as any Western). I did laugh in that we were supposed to believe Shimkus would want to go off with Ventura.
There's a lot of flabbiness to the story, some attractive people, Shimkus runs around in a bikini, Delon flies an old time bi plane, and pretty locations and underwater photography.
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