Three-in-One Thriller

Backfire. The star of this sleek French melodrama is a Triumph sports convertible. Shipped from Barcelona to Beirut, the car gets past customs but has difficulty getting out of town. Sluggish performance. "I can scarcely shift into high," complains the man at the wheel. The svelte blonde smuggler at his side smiles and tells him why. The Triumph has a $300,000 paint job. Under a surface coat of white, its body is gilded with 300 kilos of solid gold.

Sounds familiar? Blonde, bullion, gilded body. Of course, the criminal Midas who sent the Triumph in for refinishing is Gert Frobe of Goldfinger. But Director Jean Becker, unwilling to risk all on one reckless stab at success by association, has also equipped Backfire with the Breathless team of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. This time sparks fly only sporadically between them, partly because Actress Seberg?whose beauty and talent are unevenly matched?misbehaves with the studied seductiveness of a schoolgirl trying out her first pair of heels.

Belmondo, in the driver's seat all the way, highjacks the Triumph and takes off like That Man from Rio on an obstacle course that leads to Athens (hurling down stairways, stomping his pursuers unconscious), to Naples (driving off an Italian embankment in a hair-raising detour), finally to a full stop in Bremen (bed rest). By then, Backfire has gunned up a lot of excitement?for a movie operating on borrowed gas.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.