STONEY is a low rent little thriller that was shot in the Philippines and has a few local faces in the supporting cast, including Vic Diaz. An early cameo from Michael Rennie is utilised to set up the plot, which involves the hunt for some priceless gold at a remote location. Various competing factions then head off to get their hands on it. Chief of these is the female protagonist, Barbara Bouchet, who is reduced to being shown either showering or stripping to her underwear for nearly the entire running time. She's pretty good, actually, a sort of female version of James Bond, but they could have made better use of her than mere window dressing. The film's idea of action is a series of noisy shoot-outs in which various extras come in to be gunned down, but it's not very exciting and all of this only just barely hangs together as a proper movie.

"Harvey Ward" (Michael Rennie) is an international businessman who is involved in an illegal scheme to smuggle guns from Manila to Surabaya. His main rival, "Steven Blessing" (Michael Preston) learns of his plan and after an intense shootout captures the boat and takes the valuable cargo for himself. Not long afterward, Harvey invites Steve to a dinner on his boat and while there Steve's men secretly discover that Harvey has information concerning the location of $40 million in gold, diamonds and jewelry obtained by the Japanese during World War 2 and hidden in Surabaya. To assist in the movement of the gold Harvey sends his female companion "Irene Stone" (Barbara Bouchet) to carry out his plan. Naturally, Steve has other ideas and--as it just so happens--takes the same flight to Surabaya as she does. What follows is a game of intrigue involving several different players who don't follow any given set of rules. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was an okay film which could have been better if it had a bit more character development and more time and attention spent on the overall plot. As it was it seemed that some of the scenes were a bit too rushed which caused me some confusion here and there. Likewise, I didn't especially care for the ending either. Be that as it may, I thought that this was an adequate movie for the time spent and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

You know you're in trouble when the DVD cover of a film - which is usually designed, you know, to PROMOTE the film - actually speaks AGAINST it! In this case, it describes "Stoney" as an "international mishmash of espionage", which is pretty accurate, or at least the "mishmash" part is; it's set almost entirely in the Philippines, and none of the leads seem to be professional spies. I say "seem to be" because, to be honest, at no point during this film had I the slightest idea about what was going on. The two or three action scenes consist of random people shooting at other random people; the rest is unengaging talk and some discreet Barbara Bouchet nudity. Bouchet, the only possible draw of the film (another thing that the DVD cover gets right), is beautiful, of course, but she gives a rather poor performance in this one; that said, she is far, far better than anyone else in the film! Very close to completely unwatchable. 0.5 out of 4 stars.

Interesting cast, professionals such as Michael Rennie, Richard Jaeckel and Barbara Bouchet, mix them with some locals, Mike Preston, Vic Diaz, Leopoldo Salcedo and some amateurs in a film where you think the "alleged" good guy will come out on top,but doesn't. To put it in a few words....nobody wins.