Micitype Pretty Good

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS*** Barry Newman as American lawyer William Mathison gets involved with a Nazi ring in Salzburg Austria who's job it is to keep the identities of Nazi war criminals from being made public;and thus subject to being made to play for their crimes. This all stems from a medal box dredged up by Richard Bryant, Patrick Jordan,from the bottom of Lake Fintersee that's been dumped there by the fleeing Nazis at the end of WWII. Before he can open the box Bryant is murdered by two ex-Nazis who've been on his tail form the start. That alerts the local police as well as the CIA KGB MOSSAD and German and Polish intelligence agencies to scramble for the box in that now all their leads to capture the fugitive Nazi war criminals have gone up in smoke.Like most movies of this type, spy films, the plot twists and turns resulting in Mathison, an innocent bystander at first,getting caught up with the action in him trying to locate the missing box. That in him getting involved with Bryant's sister Anna, Anna Karina, who's targeted by the ex or on the lamb Nazis who feels she has knowledge about the contents in the box in who the Nazi war criminals, with their new identities, really are. We have a number of assassinations car chases and shoot-outs while at the same time enjoying the scenery of picturesque Austria until we finally get to see who's behind all this action. Who just happens to be a victim of the very Nazis themselves that he seems to be, in order to save his own behind, covering up for.****SPOILERS**** In the end Mathison save's Anna's brother Johann, Klaus-Maria Brandauer, from the Nazis holding him hostage until he reveals where the box, that has since gone missing by him both stealing as well as burying it, is hidden. The person who set this whole crazy plan up, who shall remain nameless, ended up getting rubbed out by the very Nazis that he was protecting! And as for the box itself it ended up unsealed were it was all these years at the bottom of Lake Fintersee with all its contents, the secret list of fugitive Nazis, too soggy and totally destroyed due to water damage to make any sense of them.

edwagreen Very confusing film.If it weren't for the fact that the film takes place after the war, you would recognize the scenery of the buildings in Austria just before the Anschluss of 1938 shown in the wonderful "The Sound of Music."Everyone is after a box filled with names of Nazi collaborators during the war, many of whom could resurface should Nazism ever attempt to take hold once again.The problem with the film is that there are so many sides that you begin to lose track of which side the individuals are.You know you're in for a bumpy ride when both the photographer and the one who allegedly paid him money for the photographs both wind up dead within the first 10 minutes of the film. The bodies invariably begin to pile up.You just don't know or understand where Klaus Maria Brandauer is coming from.

Jonathon Dabell The Salzburg Connection is based on a novel by Helen MacInnes, and is a rather unoriginal spy thriller with the usual ingredients that characterise practically all early '70s movies within the genre: a convoluted plot, double-crosses, triple-crosses, characters with secrets, and attractive European settings. Barry Newman is actually rather good in the leading role, and is nicely supported by the gorgeous Anna Karina.American lawyer William Mathison (Barry Newman) is vacationing in Switzerland when he is asked by an American publishing firm to go to Salzburg, Austria, to contact a photographer who has written a book about Austrian lakes. Mathison immediately realises that something is amiss when he reaches the photographer's small Salzburg shop and finds the photographer missing, and his anxious wife Anna Bryant (Anna Karina) being protected with near-claustrophobic zeal by her brother Johann (Klaus Maria Brandeur). Johann initially suspects that Mathison is a secret agent and refuses to give him any information. Gradually, though, Mathison realises that Anna's husband has been murdered, having found a chest in an Austrian lake containing a list of Nazi collaborators from WWII. Agents from all over the world, including Russia, Israel, Germany, Austria and America, want to get hold of the chest. Mathison finds himself playing a delicate game of cat-and-mouse, in which he can trust virtually no-one, such as KGB sex-pot Elisa Lang (Karen Jensen) who attempts to seduce him by posing as a free-wheeling American tourist, and elderly Austrian Felix Zauner (Wolfgang Preiss), whose name is on the list because he collaborated with the Nazis during the war in order to save the life of his wife.The film could've been pretty good, but it misses rather too many opportunities. Newman and Karina, as I've already said, are quite good, and Jensen as the KGB lady-spy also registers well. Furthermore, the locations are pleasing to the eye. But other than these scant positives, the film is a somewhat poor affair. Lee H. Katzin directs sloppily, far too frequently punctuating his movie with gimmicky editing techniques such as meaningless freeze-frames and unnecessary slow motion sequences. Katzin also ruins several key scenes by failing to make it clear quite what's going on (e.g. the finale, in which Newman and Preiss approach an abandoned gunnery post on a mountainside, is terribly rushed and seems to make little sense). At a mere 93 minutes, the film tries to cram in a heck of a lot of plotting and counter-plotting, yet too many of the characters are so hurriedly introduced that it's hard to remember who they are or what agency they work for. One scene that I DID like, however, involved Karina being kidnapped by spies and whisked away in their car. Newman - a veteran of earlier car chase movies - takes a shortcut in his own car and manages to get in front of the baddies. In a clever twist on the traditional concept of a car chase, he slows down their getaway by driving so SLOWLY that the police eventually turn up to find out who's holding up the traffic! A rare ingenious moment in an otherwise dull potboiler.

Nazi_Fighter_David After 'Vanishing Point' and 'Fear Is the Key,' Barry Newman is involved in another auto-chase, but this time with a distinct difference... The baddies, not strictly gangsters but hoodlums with Nazi connections, have kidnapped Anna Karina for some dirty purpose and are driving away with her through busy city streets...Newman, an American lawyer on holiday in Salzburg, finds himself suspected by spies of both sides... He chases the kidnap-car by continually managing to get in front of it (the high speed scenes), then slowing down to cause a traffic jam and attract the attention of the police...Klaus Maria Brandauer makes his film debut here, before his appearance in 'Mephisto,' Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Film in 1981...