General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

The Hot Rock

The Hot Rock is a 1972 American comedy caper film directed by Peter Yates, written by William Goldman from Donald E. Westlake's 1970 novel of the same name, and starring Robert Redford as the New York City thief John Dortmunder. Hired by an African diplomat to steal back a diamond taken from his nation in an act of colonial crime, Dortmunder's crew repeatedly loses the gem and must steal it again, giving the film its structure of one heist after another.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	January 26, 1972 (New York), distributed by 20th Century Fox; Los Angeles opening February 9, 1972³
Director / writer	Peter Yates; screenplay by William Goldman, from the 1970 novel by Donald E. Westlake¹
Lead cast	Robert Redford (Dortmunder), George Segal (Kelp), Ron Leibman (Murch), Paul Sand (Greenberg), Moses Gunn (Dr. Amusa), Zero Mostel (Abe Greenberg)³
Runtime / rating	101 minutes; rated GP at release, later PG¹
Production	Filmed on location in New York City, May 24 to late August 1971; budget about five million dollars per Filmfacts³
Recognition	Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing³
Music	Funk score by Quincy Jones, later sampled by hip-hop artists¹

Spoilers

Plot and premise

Career criminal John Dortmunder is released from prison just outside New York City and is met by his brother-in-law, the lock expert Andrew Kelp, who proposes a job. The target is an enormous diamond, the Sahara Stone, on display at the Brooklyn Museum behind a special glass security case. It was taken from a small African nation in a colonial-era theft, and Dr. Amusa, an African diplomat, wants it stolen back and returned to its original home.³^•⁴

Dortmunder assembles a crew that includes Murch, a getaway driver who can drive anything from a semi to a helicopter, and Greenberg, an explosives expert and lock-picker who loses his touch when nervous on a job. The gang actually makes off with the gem, but it slips through their fingers over and over again, forcing increasingly baroque schemes to steal the same stone back each time. The methods include bombs, a faked car crash, and disguises as uniformed guards and doctors.¹^•⁵

Production

The film was shot on location in New York City between May 24 and late August 1971, produced by Hal Landers and Bobby Roberts for Landers-Roberts, Inc., with Ed Brown as cinematographer and Frank P. Keller and Fred W. Berger as editors. Filmfacts reported a budget of about five million dollars.³

A time-capsule shoot. When the four thieves pilot a helicopter over downtown Manhattan, the World Trade Center, still under construction at the time, can be seen; the tower was finished in 1973 and destroyed in September 2001.³ The AFI Silver Theatre describes the finished film as a time capsule of 1970s New York City.¹

Quincy Jones wrote the score, recorded with musicians including Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax, Clark Terry on trumpet, and Chuck Rainey and Carol Kaye on Fender bass.³

Reception

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film Editing.³ On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 83% Tomatometer from 23 reviews and a 67% audience score, with a critics consensus crediting smart direction and an outstanding ensemble cast.⁵

Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times critic who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, gave the film two stars in April 1972. He wrote that it was a long way from being the perfect caper movie but had two or three scenes good enough for any caper movie ever made, and that it differed from most big heist films because Goldman and Yates laid on characterization and locations generously, at the cost of a tendency to repeat itself.² A 1972 Time review titled "Schlemiel Quartet" noted that the film apparently aimed to be the caper movie to end them all, and that Goldman had transferred the banter of his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to contemporary New York.⁶

The Dortmunder connection

The film is the first screen appearance of John Dortmunder, the New York City master thief and obsessive micromanager that Westlake introduced in his 1970 novel and who became one of the author's signature creations across a long series of books.⁴ Westlake later said that when Goldman took the adaptation job he asked to be told everything about the characters that had not gone into the book, sent Westlake portions of the script for comment, and cut the one scene Westlake considered a natural movie scene, a decision Westlake conceded was right.⁷

The 1974 film Bank Shot, based on another Westlake novel, has been described as a sister film to the 1972 adaptation.⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026