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This exceptional heist film (pity the title) has influenced dozens of others, most notably Tom Cruise's dangling scene in Mission: Impossible. Peter Ustinov (who won an Oscar here) owns the show as a low-grade con man who gets caught up in a plan to steal a jeweled dagger from Istanbul's Topkapi museum. Cops on one side, masterminds (Melina Mercouri and Maximilian Schell) on the other, and one intricately planned burglary in between. A minor classic of the genre.
