The movie is fantastic in its execution, not its substance, but it was never intended to be serious. The movie has all the glamor, and opulence that only American movies seems to be able to deliver. The choice of color, the character, and of course the girls.Dean Martin's Matt Helm was a product of the swinging '60s, and it's a beautiful movie in its own way. I wish that the modern movies had more of this kind of opulence to its style. Why not live a little like the way these people did ?It's intentionally silly, but if you take away the silly it still has the glamor like nothing you see these days. The movie is worth seeing for this alone.Elke Sommer, and Sharon Tate were beautiful, and we don't see beauties like this anymore either.

Though it wasn't planned that way, The Wrecking Crew became the last of the Matt Helm series that Dean Martin brought to the screen. At the end credits it was announced that the audience could expect a new Matt Helm film The Ravagers would be coming out next.It wasn't to be because Dino frankly got bored of the whole thing and in those days Martin would bore easily. You could tell it on the screen and in his performance that the Matt Helm series just wasn't interesting him any longer. The Wrecking Crew was filmed minus Beverly Adams as Martin's private secretary Lovey Kravezit and the role of his boss MacDonald was taken over by John Larch in place of James Gregory. It was not as ridiculous as the third film in the series, The Ambushers which was clearly the worst of them. This one involved Nigel Green stealing a shipment of gold bullion worth a cool billion.The gimmick here is that the USA does not want anyone knowing that such a shipment was stolen because of the financial implications. Which is why they've sent in Dino to get it back.One thing this film does not lack is the bevy of beautiful women working with and against Dino in his mission. They include in this film, Tina Louise, Elke Sommer, Nancy Kwan and Sharon Tate. The Wrecking Crew turned out to be the tragic Ms. Tate's next to last film.Like the James Bond films, the Helm series also had some nice spy gadgets. The Wrecking Crew had one of the best of them. It was a portable helicopter that you carried in the trunk of your car. It gets Dino and Sharon out of a tight spot. It has to be seen to be believed.Just as well the Matt Helm series ended here if Dino was as bored with it as he plainly shows.

Dean Martin returns as men's magazine photographer and part-time secret agent Matt Helm, in this, the last, weakest and most notoriously sexist of the whole leering, dirty-minded series. The plot, what there is of it, involves the recovery of a billion dollars worth of gold bullion; but the story is just a mechanism to string together a series of scenes of Dino smarming his way into the boudoirs of a bevy of beauties (Tina Louise, Nancy Kwan, Elke Sommer), hoping to tease information out of them. Sharon Tate, in one of her last screen appearances, reprises Stella Stevens' klutzy sidekick part from The Silencers, but, like the movie as a whole, does not quite hit the right note with it, making for a hit and miss performance. The whole exercise is silly beyond belief, the usual jokes about Dean/Matt's drinking and womanizing fall flat and Dean himself was beginning to look a little old for an action hero. Plus, the sets and settings looked a bit cheap and stage-bound for what was supposed to be an international action hit. What 'entertainment' value there is here involves the camera lingering on the legs and cleavages of Dean's shapely co-stars, and the tight plot from Don Hamilton's novel is a dog-eared illogical mess by the time it hit the screen. Any true action-suspense fan will rapidly develop a headache from the gaps and gaffs in the logic of what is left of the plot.The final credits advertise a fifth Matt Helm adventure - The Ravagers - which was never made. Clearly, the public, the studio and Dino himself must have been tiring of the whole business by this point.

Someone once said that Dean Martin was so laid-back he made Perry Como look like a nervous wreck. It was said if a nuclear bomb went off behind him he wouldn't even drop his martini glass. Martin and his fellow Rat-packer Frank Sinatra were among our few recording giants who achieved in films as well. Although not as good an actor as Sinatra, Martin had a charming presence on the screen and was always entertaining to watch, even when you knew he wasn't taking it too seriously. The Matt Helm films came out at the same time as Sean Connery was playing Bond and have been largely forgotten today. Martin played the reluctant spy with tongue firmly in cheek. The Wrecking Crew was the last of the four Helm films and I feel it was the best. A gold train has been hijacked by a criminal mastermind. The one billion dollar theft will cause world wide financial panic and its up to Matt Helm to save the day. Of course in any spy film of this nature, you have to have beautiful women and there are plenty here. Elke Sommer and Tina Louise light up the screen, but it is Sharon Tate who steals the show as bumbling MI5 agent Freya Carlson. I thought it was so funny how she kept getting Helm into deeper and deeper trouble, even getting him arrested at one point. She tells him "I wont desert you Mister Helm". He says "Do me a favor PLEASE DESERT ME!". However, she comes through in the end and there is a good fight scene between her and Nancy Kwan. (For trivia lovers, Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee helped to set up the fight scenes for this film). People have commented the fight scenes involving Helm are fakey, what do you expect? Dean Martin was 52 when this film was made. Sharon really stole the show in this one, in fact they later based one of the characters in the Austin Powers films on her character here. This was her last film before she was murdered by the Charles Manson family. Its chilling when you watch it and think of how horribly her life ended.