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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Director Jules Dassin (Night and the City, The Naked City) fashioned this breezy and intricate 1964 thriller with a sly comic bent, and it enjoyed international popularity and became an influence for other high-toned European caper films. Peter Ustinov (Spartacus, Death on the Nile) won an Academy Award for his performance as a hapless driver, clueless to the plans of his cohorts, two jewel thieves who plan to steal a priceless dagger from the Topkapi museum in Istanbul, Turkey. Maximilian Schell (Deep Impact, Judgment at Nuremburg) and Melina Mercouri (The Victors, The Gypsy and the Gentleman) play the jet-setting thieves, who choose a motley band of amateurs instead of pros in order to throw off the authorities. But when Ustinov is apprehended by the cops, he agrees to act as a spy in order to thwart the robbery. Eventually, Ustinov must choose between saving his own hide and remaining loyal to the seductive Mercouri as the machinations of the robbery become ever more complex. Sleek and entertaining, Topkapi is filled with intrigue and thrills at every turn. --Robert Lane
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Another Crime Comedy
Topkapi is the former harem of the Sultan of Turkey in Istanbul. There is a museum that contains rich jewels and many armed guards to protect the treasures. "Elizabeth Lipp" introduces us to the museum. Walter Harper agrees to steal the emerald encrusted dagger but will use amateurs who don't have records that will make them suspects to the police. An expert tells how a strain gauge can detect any solid body on the floor. But there is a way to defeat this. Next Elizabeth and Walter pay Arthur Simpson ... Read More
Rating:  - Excellent DVD !
This is an unforgetable masterpiece performed by the Greek actress Melina Mercouri. The story is amazing and funny. The landscapes and the music are magnificent. The rest of the actors are so good, in particular Maximilian Schell and Peter Ustinov. I have watched it once and once again. Don't miss it, really is a treasure as well as its name !!
Rating: - Not funny
I bought this movie hoping to be entertained mostly by Ustinov's brand of humor, but I didn't laugh once throughout. The plot ain't actually bad, but this one might have been better off as full-on suspense, instead of the 60'ss-tinged whimsical adventure it's oriented as. Melina Mercouri plays the lecherous old bag well enough, but I would have preferred someone a little more pleasant to look at. I can't imagine wanting to view it again.
Rating: - An irritating experience.
Obnoxious, cloying characters, ho-hum exposition and tedious set-ups abound in the early-60s caper which enjoys a grossly inflated reputation. The heist itself is good as far as those thing go, but has been improved upon in the decades since.
Melina Mercouri serves almost no purpose in the film except to be the supposed "mastermind" which means she wants some loot. He accomplice, Herr Schelling, also spends the film mugging for the camera with no apparent skill set. Ustinov, at times funny, ... Read More
Rating:  - "You're foreign?" "No, I'm English."
Ripped off by Mission: Impossible, long on Pierce Brosnan's remake slate as an intended sequel to his version of The Thomas Crown Affair and intended by director Jules Dassin as a send-up of his classic heist movie Riffifi, Topkapi is a genuinely enjoyable comic caper movie despite a surfeit of reasons why it shouldn't work. Like Eartha Kitt, a little of Melina Mercouri goes a long way (even more so a surprisingly unfunny and irritating Akim Tamiroff), but the rest of the cast - which includes Maximilian ... Read More
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