Summary
A detective’s infiltration into an established gang of thieves is typically one of the most appealing plots offered by a crime thriller. In the hands of screenwriter Vojtěch Měšťan, known for Kdo hledá zlaté dno (Who Looks for Gold?, 1974), such scenarios became the foundation for the films of Otakar Fuka during the “normalisation” era. The motion pictures amount to stories that are critical of the theft of socialist property. In Pumpaři od Zlaté podkovy (Gold-Hoof Petrol-Pump Attendants), crime fighter Zdeněk Černý, played by the manly Jiří Bartoška, goes undercover to work at a petrol station where the employees are aggressively supplementing their base salaries. The trio of dishonest workers is also illegally exchanging foreign currencies. The colleagues gradually let the new guy in on their scams, while Bartoška gains an informant in the shape of a waitress at the nearby café for motorists – Bobina (Karolina Slunéčková). The bad guys in the film, which provides an interesting look at the contemporary period, are played by Josef Vinklář, Jiří Krampol and Miroslav Moravec.
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