Criminal mastermind and ex-safecracker Duke Anderson (Sean Connery looking mean with thick black eyebrows and a thinning hairline) is released from ten years in jail and takes up with his old girlfriend, Ingrid (Dyan Cannon) in her expensive apartment on the stately upper reaches of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.
He makes plans to rob the entire apartment building – which is packed to the rafters with rich tenants and their expensive possessions – but is unaware that his every move is recorded on audio and videotape, although he himself is not actually the subject of any surveillance.
Martin Balsam is a swishy antique dealer and Alan King plays a Mafia chief. A young Christopher Walken is terrific in his film debut as an electronics whiz kid that Duke met in prison (pictured below).
The apartment building used in the film is the former Otto H. Kahn mansion, now a convent, at Fifth and E 91st Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Robert ‘Duke’ Anderson
Sean Connery
Ingrid Everly
Dyan Cannon
Tommy Haskins
Martin Balsam
Captain Delaney
Ralph Meeker
Pat Angelo
Alan King
The Kid
Christopher Walken
Rocco Parelli
Val Avery
Edward Spencer
Dick Williams
Sergeant Everson
Garrett Morris
William ‘Pop’ Meyerhoff
Stan Gottlieb
Jimmy
Paul Benjamin
Psychologist
Anthony Holland
Werner Gottlieb
Richard B. Shull
Dr Rubicoff
Conrad Bain
Miss Kaler
Margaret Hamilton
Director
Sidney Lumet