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Eddie Ross (Eddie Constantine), a down-on-his-luck writer, sees a
woman, Esperanza, being roughed up by a guy, and he saves her by relieving
the guy of his switchblade knife and beating him to a pulp. He leaves the
knife at the scene though, and it's soon picked up by anonymous hands,
very carefully so to not spoil Eddie's perfect fingerprints on it. Soon
after that, Eddie reveives an offer from a mysterious Martinez, to be at
his disposal for a few simple jobs, an offer that pays too well for Eddie
to refuse - but while he pretends to play along with Martinez' every whim,
he actually investigates behind his back and soon finds out Esperanza is
part of his racket, but only co-operates because Martinez has blackmailed
her to - the two soon become lovers of course. Eddie also finds a man
murdered with the switchblade he left with the knocked out ruffian
earlier, but has the good sense to wipe off his fingerprints. Then he
learns Martinez actually tries to blackmail him into submission. Eddie has
long decided for his own and Esperanza's sake to eventually expose
Martinez, so he pretends to play along, while secretly collecting evidence
against Martinez. Eventually, Eddie learns that Martinez plans to steal
a bag worth 50 million pesetas from the National Reserve, money actually
destined for destruction, and he has built a large network of
collaborators (all through blackmail) who don't know about one another
that if everybody does just one little job, nothing can go wrong ... or
can it? Fact is, eventually, Eddie gets his hands on the money and informs
the vice president of the National Reserve - fully aware that he is
probably Martinez. But ultimately, Martinez corners Eddie and Esperanza,
and it's only thanks to Eddie's chimp, who has escaped with the money and
run into a cop, that the police arrive on time to save their hide. So-so
crime thriller that works mainly due to Eddie Constantine's charisma and
tongue-in-cheek approach, while the film's story as such tries a little
too hard to be intelligent for its own good and while the premise is
interesting, it does get a bit too much in its own contraptions. The
direction unfortunately at times lets down both the story and actors, and
the thing as a whole comes off as a tad jumpy - which all is not to say
the film's a total loss, just far from being a real winner, even among its
peers.
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