Customer Reviews

Dollars [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw this movie on television in the beginning of the 80's. I thought it was great fun then and when I bought the video last year I found it to be even better. Warren Beatty does a great job and so does the other actors. Quincy Jones great score adds to the suspense. My favorite scene is the chase on the ice. A wonderful movie that deserves more attention and respect.

Filmed on location in Hamburg and other northern Europe settings around 1970, Dollars has a great look to it, the story is tight and plausible and the casting is great. The opening is a little confusing as the interweaving storyline is set in motion but it all comes together beautifully a third of the way into the action. There is so much going on in Dollars that multiple viewings will be rewarded, and the soundtrack is one of the best I've heard, especially if you like jazz, and is well matched to the action. Watching these veteran actors do their thing is a treat, so much more substantial than the lightweight junk being put out today. I can't believe this flick is so unknown.

and that one scene with Goldie Hawn, as someone said, how did that get past the censor!? Hilarious.

Aside from the killer soundtrack, Quincy Jones during his salad days(Is that Jean Luc Ponty playing the fiddle on ORANGEBLOSSOM EXPRESS?), I like this film because there is camera motion in nearly every shot. I doubt that the director, Richard Brooks, used storyboards to make this film. There's a scene in the first half where a police car zooms underneath an overpass just as the trailing coaches of two commuter trains break overhead. I wonder how Brooks set up that fantastic shot?! The chase which occupies the last 30 minutes is almost wholly on foot. This film has great performances by the supporting actors. Gert Frobe is comically bungling as the bank's manager. Arthur Brauss is menacing as the raspy voiced drug smuggler with rear-view mirrors in his shades, "the Candyman." And Scott Brady has a great turn as a corrupt army NCO. He gets my vote for best movie death scene; "From one ounce they will make three hundred thousand capsules of L.S.D...." Look for the scene where Robert Webber pays Goldie Hawn, the film's "hooker with a heart of gold," to "put out his fire." I'm surprised this scene got past the censors!

Vietnam era film that's all but disappeared! One problem is the title itself: it's listed as above and also $$$. (As an example, try looking up "The Departed" under "The"). Too bad, because Beatty and Hawn pull off an ingenious bank robbery in Europe, playing "Robin Hood" types preying on the gangland rich. Beatty's racing for safety scenes would make even Matt Damon (as Jason Bourne) jealous. The movie is both exciting and fun, a rare combination in 2007.You'd even think that Timothy Leary wasn't now among the "departed". Try to pick up a copy for the entertainment and/or for a collector's item.

[1988 Goodtimes VHS: 122 minutes].

Very strong performances by Beatty and Hawn plus an engaging soundtrack lift this hyperactive, semi-farce about international banking. They'll only rob from the rich...and give to themselves.
Beatty is a Bank Security Officer who can't stop muttering to himself no matter who is in earshot and Hawn is effective as a free-lance "Escort" who is a bit insecure in her new role as co-conspirator; she is a few years past her Laugh-In looniness and has come up with an interesting character.
This movie has traveled through the decades in a low-profile manner, which is surprising considering the successful careers of the two stars, plus Director Richard Brooks, and, of course, Quincy Jones.
The finale has some funky action on a frozen waterway, though the plot line has a certain stumbling forward momentum, nicely underscored in the early scenes by two Little Richard songs recorded in 1971 for this enterprise, "Money Is" (would have made a great movie title - seems that the powers-that-be have never decided if it's "Dollars", "The Heist", or "$$$"), and a risque rocker called "Do It - To It", both uptempo.
Richard fans, get this: these are *movie versions*, if you check out your well-worn vinyl, or the tracks revived on a 3-CD set of LR's Reprise sessions, released on Rhino Handmade.

Money, a movie which is just about non existent, is a movie that I saw in the theater well over thirty years ago. I have, over the last twenty, tried (in vain) to purchase this movie on DVD. If you look on the two stars filmography, (Warren Beatty Goldie Hawn) this movie is very rarely mentioned. I'm not sure if it's because they considered it a low budget film or neither one wants to remember making it. But, it's really a very good movie. The plot was good, and to my knowledge, had not been done before this film. I think the controversial role of Goldie Hawn, playing a prostitute, may have been a factor in the down playing of this movie, because, it was not long after that Ms Hawn won an academy award for Cactus Flower. Warren Beatty, on the other hand, plays his typical, lover boy role, although he's restricted to only Ms. Hawn in this movie. A bank heist, a couple of crooks (Beatty, Hawn) who are robbing thieves, (the mob, local and military crime bosses) of illegal money, that cannot be reported to the police. Will the crooks figure out who did it? Will Beatty and Hawn get away with it? This all makes for an enjoyable movie, and since it's really not in many rental, streaming, or buying circles, I'm pretty sure it's not been seen two many times since it's initial release. Check it out, it's a movie well worth watching, and for my money, "Dollars" was worth every cent.

Dollars is a bank heist-car chase movie from the early 1970s. Shot with a low-ball urban shoe-string look and sensibility. It contains the motifs of this genre that keeps it's core audience satiated. Fast cars, daring heist, 'good guys' & bad guys with little or no morals, loose women, shady dealings, where no-body relevant to the story gives a f***. Quincy Jones (The Getaway) supplies the soundtrack, great fun, also available, somewhere. Goldie Hawn looks delicious, post-war Hamburg looks bleak, Warren Beatty is effective and not showing off in his role. The car-chase is really good, maybe the first on snow and ice & well done.

this heist film was worth the wait of finally being brought out in DVD. not your average heist film in that they steal from the "bad" guys. very entertaining and suspenseful. if you like hitchcock and/or heist films you'll like this one. one of MY favorites. lots of good actors in it. warren beatty, goldie hawn, gert frobe, rober weber.

I saw this movie in the theater years ago and I was a good as I remembered.

Dollars [VHS]
DOLLARS is a heist flik, a clever, suspenseful scheme to rob the safety deposit boxes of a Swiss bank holding the illicit loot of thieves, smugglers, and traffickers who cannot report the theft.

After his menacing role as Auric Goldfinger, it is a pleasure to see Gerd Frobe playing the bank manager who can't resist a pretty skirt. The chase sequence, with the crooks after the plotter who designed the bank's security for his own cracking, Warren Beatty, is one of the longest on film. Playing her shtick as a ditzy hooker who fingers the crooks for fleecing with a comic touch, Goldie's part is small, but pivotal when she outfoxes her partner in the final scene.