We'd just been watching a show involving amateur actors demonstrating how fight scenes are staged - they can look really rubbish. And the reason they don't look rubbish in this film is that Clint Eastwood's long term associate and on location golf partner Buddy Van Horn coordinated the stunts. (He had directed a couple of his films too.)
It's a pleasingly old-fashioned, studio set, comedy-gangster thriller, with buddies who hate each other cop Clint Eastwood and gumshoe / former cop Burt Reynolds. The plot involves some stolen ledgers and two rival crime gangs, and Madeline Khan as Burt's high society girlfriend. And briefly features Richard Roundtree as Reynolds' partner. Jane Alexander is the faithful secretary (we perhaps know her from The Cider House Rules and later The Good Fight). With Rip Torn, Irene Cara, Tony Lo Bianco. And... Joan Shawlee!
A couple of other Eastwood regulars feature too: Tom Stern is the gaffer, and Jack Green (future cinematographer) is operating the Panaglide camera. (Nick McLean is the DP.) Good jazzy score from Lennie Niehaus - indeed we even see Clint (sort of) playing the piano in the nightclub.
It was originally a Blake Edwards script but for various reasons he was taken off the project* and it was rewritten by Joe Stinson.
*According to Clint's biographer Richard Schickel, Edwards originally sent the scrip to Sondra Locke, but it was just a way of getting Clint interested; Edwards in reality wanted his wife Julie Andrews for the lead female role - Clint did not appreciate that. Then when negotiations started, the dollar-conscious Clint became wary of Edwards' demand for the rental of a house and driver on the shoot, so backed off.
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