THIEVES AND ROBBERS is another knockabout comedy vehicle for the great Bud Spencer, this time paired up with Tomas Milian rather than his usual sparring partner Terence Hill. Milian was in a series of electrifying police films in the 1970s, but he plays an annoyingly over-the-top con man here, which lessens the enjoyability somewhat. Still, Spencer is a droll delight and the usual scenes of him beating up punks are great fun. The film is light, breezy and sunny, with a simple versus-the-mafia plot and plenty of nonsense at all times.

Amusement and entertainment with Spencer as a tough cop against a pilferer amusingly played by Tomas Milian who uses to seduce older women and steals their jewelry ; however , being witness a murder and then he is pursued by Mafia . Entertaining and funny Italian film with the bouncing Spencer or Carlo Perdesoli as a detective from Miami Police Department . Set in modern-day Miami , a cop named Alan Parker ultimately is going on Holiday with all his family , wife and five sons . But his vacation flies away at the last moment and he has to cancel the scheme to re-capture a cocky thief named Tony Roma (Tomas Milian) . Parker is close to sort a case out when Tony is witness of a killing ordered by a Mafia boss (Mark Lawrence , an American secondary who used to play gangsters from the 40s) . There happens several adventures , car pursuits , shootouts and Alan Parker protects Tony from Mafia and they flee in a cattle wagon but his family is kidnapped . Fun comedy set on Miami , it's a vehicle for Bud Spencer enthusiasts , dealing with chases , leaps-and-bounds cars , mobsters ,kidnappings , and an obstinate policeman against all . Spencer takes on lots of greed men who are interested in killing his witness , facing off risks , and several adventures .

This is an engaging entertaining juvenile for Bud Spencer buffs , as he's delightful . It packs action, fist-play , slapdash, humor with tongue-and-cheek and is quite amusing . This entertaining , sympathetic movie is crammed of fist-fights, punches , kicks, knocks-outs , overwhelming stunt-work and lots of humor . This bemusing picture is starred by the Cuban Tomas Milian , as usual, he puts faces , grimaces, crying and overacting , but plays splendidly , here as a roguish named Tony Roma , a bad copy of a Latin lover . He starred the Sergio Sollima's famous trilogy , Spaghetti Western with a notorious character called ¨Cuchillo¨ and formed by ¨Big gundown¨, ¨Face to face¨ and ¨Run Cuchillo run¨ . Bud Spencer is top-notch as one army man taking on a group of bandits and as always he makes his own stunts with comic touches , as usual . It relies heavily on the agreeable relationship between grumpy ,two-fisted cop , Bud Spencer , and the rogue swindler , Tomas Milian . This release has some cool and several hilarious moments , though the Terence Hill-Bud Spencer duo films are much better . The film isn't always good , sometimes is fresh and diverting and on a couple of memorable occasions , it's frankly delicious. The movie displays innumerable laughters , jokes and slapstick . The picture is well starred by Bud Spencer . Bud , the popular Latin movie actor who starred in innumerable spaghetti Westerns and action-packed potboilers during the 1960s and '70s, was born Carlo Pedersoli (1929) in Naples. He was the first Italian to swim the 100 meter freestyle and competed as a swimmer at the Olympic games . He appeared as a member of the Praetorian Guard in his first movie, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's epic "Quo Vadis" in 1951. He changed his screen name to "Bud Spencer" in 1967, as a homage to Spencer Tracy and to the American beer Budweiser. Spencer achieved his greatest hit in spaghetti Westerns lensed for a global audience. Teaming up with fellow Italian Terence Hill, the two made such international successes as I Quattro dell'Ave Maria (1968) and "They Call Me Trinity" , and ¨Trinity is still my name¨ . Their dual outings made both stars famous, particularly in Europe. In all, Spencer made 18 movies with Hill . Later on , he became a jet airplane and helicopter pilot after appearing in ¨Crazy plane¨ (1972) and owned an air transport company, Mistral Air, which he founded in 1984. However, he terminated his business interest in Mistral and entered the children's clothing industry. After 1983, Spencer's movie career slowed down, though he did have a big success in the early 1990s with the TV action-drama "Extralarge". A man of many talents, Bud wrote texts and plots for some of his films . He also has registered several royalties. In the 70s and 80s Bud Spencer starred quite a few movies without Terence Hill , as he made three kind of films : 1ª he performed pictures with a little boy as partner as ¨Banana Joe ¨ , ¨Aladdin¨and ¨The Supersheriff¨ ; 2ª about cop named Flatfoot or Rizzo, also called Piedone, such as, ¨Flatfoot in Cairo , Flatfoot in Hong Kong, Flatfoot in Egypt , Flatfoot in Africa¨, furthermore the ¨Extralargo¨ series 3ª about diverse characters as a medieval knight as ¨Soldier of fortune¨ , a swindler as ¨Mr Charleston¨ or a fisherman , ex-player as ¨Bulldozer .

The picture packs commercial musical score by La Bionda in similar style to usuals Guido and Maurizio De Angelis , including catching sounds fitting perfectly in the mood of the movie . Passable cinematography by Silvio Ippoliti , though is necessary a perfect remastering . The story is middling written by by Mario Amendola, following the Hill-Spencer ordinary trademarks , he wrote several Spencer vehicles as ¨Banana Joe¨, ¨Aladdin¨, ¨A friend is a treasure¨, and ¨Par and Impar¨. The motion picture is regularly directed by Bruno Corbucci, Sergio Corbucci's brother. Bruno wrote and directed various Hill-Spencer films as ¨Banana Joe¨ , ¨Miami Supercops¨ , ¨Par-Impar¨ , ¨Cat and Dog¨ and ¨Aladdin¨ . If you love the Spencer's other movies, go for it, and if you've never seen one this is an acceptable start ; but only for Bud fans . This is an average entertaining juvenile that will appeal to Italian comedy buffs

This film is called "Cane e gatto", which obviosuly means "Cat and Dog", but the official international title is "Thieves and Robbers". Of course, with the German title the went for one that includes the name "Bud" in the title to make obvious how big of a star Spencer was here in Germany and still is. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to watch one of his movies on the big screen and it is nice they are still shown in movie theaters here and there, even after his death, so people from the next generation, maybe those who werenÄt even born when he died, get in touch with his great body of work. This movie we have here will most likely never be shown in theaters again, or only very rarely and I watched it on television last night. It runs for minimally over 1.5 hours, so not a particularly long film, but also not super short. The director is Bruno Corbucci and this was certainly not the only occasion on which he worked with Spencer/Pedersoli. He is also one of the two writers which makes sense because he may have been a prolific director, but his more frequent profession was coming up with screenplays. First credit here is of course Bud Spencer already, who was in his early 50s when this was made and a bit of a star. At least a bigger star than his co-lead Tomas Milian here. The Italian title is kinda more fitting I would say because these two constantly end up together, but cannot really stand each other, although it is a friendly kind of approach and maybe deep down inside they actually likeeach other a bit. At least Bud does not beat his co-lead up here on several occasions as he could. Instead he just proves he is smarter, well not always, and gets in the way of his many escapes. Or at least tries to. The little guy is fairly sneaky, so sometimes he has an actual shot at getting away. Another name maybe bigger than what you usually getw with Bud Spencer films is Marc Lawrence, who worked wit Tarantino, appeared in two Bond movies and over 200 other projects. He plays the main antagonist this time. He was already really old back then, but still lived on for another 20 years. Spencer plays a cop here, who is hiding under an alternative identity though, so nobody knos about his real profession. Namely he pretends to be a salesman, which results in some scenes when he is selling stuff to people, like washing machines, or just talking to people why said washing machines are not properly working. This is for the comedy for sure. Well, could have been funnier. Even if it is not always him who does most of the talking, it becomes obvious that physical comedy is more his strength than verbal comedy. He also uses this fake profession in order to get in touch with people close to targets and basically wait for them there like he does with Milian's character's mother on one occasion. Still he is a really good cop, must be said. He always gets the job done, but others screw up, so he has to catch Milian's character more than once. And well, the final scene when the gigolo runs from the wedding (can you blame him?) is kinda symbolic as it is really a cat-and-mouse game between these two, more than a cat-and-dog game, althought his applies to because Milian's character is far from a mouse in terms of harmlessness. It all fits better than the international title because the main character here is neither a thief nor a robber and honestly, the co-lead is not any of these things either. What I actually wanted to say is that the ending summarizes the film nicely in a comedic way and the way they did it reminded me a bit of Spencer's films with Terence Hill. There is also always a bit of a funny conflict for closure.

So I just mentioned Hill and as you can see from the title of my review, I think that Milian did a fairly nice job replacing Hill in here. Here in Germany, this duo Spencer/Hill is really famous. Butg Milian is fine, makes the character his own already and Hill would not have fit too well. Hill is more of a hunk and handsome than a sleazy gigolo. It is for good reason that this film is not too famous here in Germany despite Spencer being in it. At least not as famous as his many films with Hill or where he is the one and only undisputed lead. As for the story, you see the bad guys being criminals in many films starring Spencer. This time it goes against the Mafia. Admittedly, Lawrence's character may not be the most famous godfather out there. Or at least not the most capable because it's already cringeworthy how he lets the witness get awway the first time. Luckily, they did take a route here that is accurate when it comes to the Mafia being part of a film. The guy where Milian's character witnesses the murder is indeed killed, even if not very graphically for us to see. They keep these harmless. But then later on, there is this killer squad scene when we have 20 mobsters or so come out of cars and they keep firing at the train wagon where they think the two are inside. Of course, they are faster again. Not too frequent that you see Spencer running from something or somebody, but if a whole lot of automatic guns are involved, even he does. This may have to do with the fact that normally there are not really guns involved in his films, so he can just beat them up with his bare fists. But going up againstg the Mafia, this would have been pretty ridiculous admittedly, so reight decision here by the two writers to take a slightly different route. At the end, however, it is standard Spencer and there is a big brawl where he prevails before the bad guy is submitted to the police with evidence to lock him away for the rest of his life. This evidence would be the tape that Milian's character also has on an early occasion when he tries to trick the watchdog. A bit unrealistic he has it with him there. Just like he does when he witnesses the murder. Or also how the police force is almost completely absent throughout the movie and it's basically the two main characters (with the help of one or two others at the end) going up against Cosa Nostra. Then again, Bud Spencer films are never about realism, always about fun and, even if this one here differs a bit from the general approach of these, this is still very true here. There are many fun moments. Like when Buddy talks about how it is sadly not possible yet to iron clothes inside washing machines. Sadly, now in 2020 we are still not able to do so and looks as if it's gonna take a long time still until science is that progressive. Another recurring joke I found funny is the one about calling the lawyer. Spencer's character is tricked there as well early on, but in the end he is part of this scheme too in order to take care of the bad guys. Of course, it is entirely subjective what you find funny here and what not so much. Maybe Milian's character's constant bantering with women eventually gets old, maybe you disagree, although the scene with the doctor was still decently funny. However, I think it is almost impossible you will not laugh or at least smile at all when watching this film. I give it a positive recommendation with almost zero hesitation, even if real greatness is not included here. Yoou don't need my recommendation though I'm sure. If you consider checking this one out, I am positive you have seen many of the Spencer classics already and can make up you mind yourself. It is not a film that is a great choice to start with when it comes to Pedersoli/Spencer. Rather one to watch when you have seen ten films or so already. Go for it nonetheless! Also to see the rarity of a Bud Spencer character being married with (many) children.