In short: Live a Little, Steal a Lot (1975)

aka Murph the Surf

Allan Kuhn (Robert Conrad) uses his official “career” as strapping, bare-chested beach boy to hide his true profession as not always fully dressed jewel thief in Miami. For reasons the film never really makes clear, he becomes best buds with the ultra 70s macho adrenaline junkie and original beach bum Jack Murphy (Don Stroud), also going by the moniker of Murph the Surf. Very quickly, Allan lets Jack in on his actual profession and teams up with him, again for reasons that pretty much hang in the wind, given that Jack’s the last person anyone would want in any job that could use even an ounce of calm professionalism.

They also fall in with flight attendant Ginny (Donna Mills), who falls for Jack rather heavily. Jack enters into the sort of relationship with her you’d expect from a guy clearly incapable of loving anyone but himself, while Allan does a bit of highly atypical pining for her. After several adventures and misadventures, and increasing strains on all of their relationships, the two buddies steal the ridiculously badly secured J.P. Morgan jewel collection from the New York Museum of Natural History. Things don’t go terribly well after that.

Based on a real crime and using real names (but certainly not taking place in 1964 like the actual crime did), Marvin J. Chomsky’s crime movie never seems to be clear what exactly it wants to focus on: the shittiness of 70s machismo and the way it destroys women? The destructive friendship between two men? That crime is fun? That crime isn’t fun at all? Consequently, there’s a little bit of every of these elements in the movie, but you’d be hard pressed to use any single one of these and say the film’s about it.

Being quite this all over the place might have worked with a different director, but Marvin J. Chomsky only has his TV director chops to use, and so there are few scenes going beyond a bit of bland craftsmanship, and certainly not the kind of creative spark that could make any kind of a whole out of this mess.

Not that the script by E. Arthur Kean and apparently the real Allan Kuhn is of any help there. It is, after all setting up all these bits and pieces it then doesn’t really focus on, and makes things even more chaotic through one of the most pointless flashback structures you can imagine.

At least we get a pretty good boat chase out of this mess.