An average but passable -at times - thriller with explosive conflict of world-shattering espionage , containing regular ingredients as suspense , intriguing events , sightseeing and a few bouts of unconvincing fights . Includes thrills , frantic action , several villain roles , fist-fights , various international locations , shootouts with high body-count and being middlingly entertaining from start to finish . An international espionage in which a nasty mastermind (Renato Baldini) with help of the bad guy Frank (José Suárez) try to get an essential formula for a solid-rocket-fuel . Meanwhile , our spy , government agent Serge Vadile, agent X 13 (Gérard Barray) attempts to prevent foreign spies from obtaining the scientist's formula . Posing as an accident investigator, Serge visits a plane crash site in which the professor was injured and all we see is the disordered interior of the passenger cabin playing dead. Much of the subsequent action is centred on the hospital where the Professor is admitted and a series of less than stellar plot developments that seem merely designed to pad the run time to feature length. Along the way , Serge falls in love for a gorgeous nurse (Sylva Koscina) , and he will stop at nothing to get his purports , as he even gasses a fellow agent who has switched sides for love.
The story is a fun mess starting with a twisted plot with pursuits and thrills along the city of Trieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy and some spectacular locations . Happening mutual spying and disconcerting confrontations with a lot of violent fights , treason , crossfire , some decent stunt driving and a couple of explosions . Rather boring , routine Eurospy shenanigans, with the only noticeable twist being the involvement of a French film company in its production, along with the inevitable collaboration of Italian and Spanish studios . The lack of production resource is pretty obvious from our opening sequence with a few extras and the plane disaster is rendered through the tremendously convincing medium of two characters hearing a distant explosion a bit of gun play. It displays a charming cast , but the uneven filmmaking falters in film that wavers from mystery , thriller and necessary action-packed . There're lack of decent action scenes , big sets, stunt work, gadgets and set pieces may have been as much to do with budget limitations . Colorful and so-so rendition about European spy subgenre , a prolific genre during the sixties , not taking any situation seriously . A fashion , but pedestrian run-of-the-mill spy film at the time, meaning it stuck to a lot of what was currently popular , but here including some embarrassing and nonsense scenes . Inspired by the success of the James Bond films, as this spy sub-genre borrows heavily from the OO7 series that at the time starred Sean Connery , such as : Dr No (1962) , From Russia with love , Thunderball, and Goldfinger . The content remains similar other stories in this Euro-spy sub-genre : a ruthless villainous , some beautiful girls , alongside ridiculous , uptight and extremely silly action set pieces from a today's point of view . A Sixties-style film usually has a short sell-by date , and this flick isn't exception . The script doesn't help him either , as it consists of the habitual intrigue to take on a powerful organization , while our starring go around , stalking here and there , but actually tells no more than different people spying on and beating up each other in the hope of getting their ominous aims . Of course , with such a film from nostalgic and botcher ways , one does not count on high art work . It is staged in a hopelessly amateurish way , it shows us rows of bare fights and several confrontations with a number of dead people in the worst choreography . As our starring behaving in such an tough activity and so stupid manners so that committing usual mistakes on their own way . The screenplay works with unnecessary contradictions and implausibility , including absurd moments , and the story is thinner than it usually is in works of this kind , the Euro-spy sub-genre . It has some flaws and gaps , as it does tend to get a bit old , including repetitive nature of some fight scenes , and excessive nonsense , but it has a bit of fun , at times, so it cares . The main and support cast -with everyone having amusement- are acceptable , slightly adequate to their functional characters . At a time when espionage plots were very much in fashion thanks to the bursting onto celluloid of films about secret agent James Bond , European filmmakers returned to action and adventure cinema with this film starring one of the greatest European actors in adventure genre : Gérard Barray who was the leading hero in Adventure-Movies made in France - following Jean Marais and on his side in his starting-out-Movies . He became famous as D'Artagnan in "Les trois mousquetaires", Surcouf in ¨The Sea Pirate¨and ¨Le retour de Surcouf¨, as Hardi Pardaillan in ¨Le Chevalier de Pardaillan¨or ¨The Gallant Musketeer¨ and "Commissaire San Antonio". In 1969 he changed his profile to the dark side as Van Britten , partner of young Claude Jade in ¨Le témoin¨ (1969) - his most interesting part , but whithout great success . And he played a similar Euro-spy co-produced by the same countries titled Gibraltar (1964) . His come-back to popularity was the TV-Man Duvernois and a fundamental secondary role in ¨Open your eyes¨ (1997) by Alejandro Amenábar. Being well accompanied by one of the best post-war Italian actresses , Sylva Koscina, who is best remembered as Steve Reeves' better half in cheesy Italian muscleman epics 'Hercules' (1958) and 'Hercules Unchained' (1959) but had a significant career in more respectable cinema, appearing in Georges Franju's 'Judex' (1963) and 'Juliet of the Spirits' (1965) for Federico Fellini. Appearing some familiar faces from the Sixties who worked in the habitual 60s , 70s sub-genres : Peplum, Spaghetti Western , Giallo, horror, Euro-thriller , including Spanish actors : José Súarez , Gemma Cuervo, Gérard Tichy , Miguel de la Riva, Oscar Pellicer , Luis Induni ; French players : Agnès Spaak , Yvette Lebon and Italian ones : Renato Baldini , Aldo Bufi Landi , Osvaldo Genazzani .
Mediocre directing was appropriately split between Italian Silvio Siano (La vedovella, La donnaccio, Lo sgarro) and Frenchman Maurice Cloche (who made a loose Eurospy trilogy with 'Agent FX18' (1964) starring Ken Clark and 'Le Vicomte Regie Jes Comptes' 1967). Rating : 4.5/10 . Very average Euro-spy movie.
