Pages

Saturday, March 28, 2009

The Great Train Robbery (1978) [PG] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert on February 9, 1979 (edited by the blogger).

England has had its share of great train robberies, including the one immortalized in Stanley Baker's Robbery. But there was, we learn, only one Great Train Robbery, and that was the first one, in 1855. Until one Edward Pierce made off with a shipment of gold being sent to meet the British army's payroll in the Crimean War (England and France vs. Russia), it was, quite simply, thought impossible to rob a moving train.

Pierce got clean away with some £4,000 of gold bullion (approximately $410,000 in 2017 US dollars) The haul is a great deal larger in Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery, but he based his original novel more or less on the facts. In the process of writing and directing the movie, however, Crichton has taken more liberties with the facts, and he's inserted a vein of wry humor. That's just as well, since (a) we don't desperately need another tightly wound caper film, and (b) his cast was born to play wry humor.

The leads are Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland, teamed up with Lesley-Anne Down (fondly recalled as Georgina on Upstairs, Downstairs). Connery is one of the best light comedians in the movies, and has been ever since those long-ago days when he was James Bond. The Bond movies, with their violent pyrotechnics and bizarre special effects are somehow remembered as thrillers. Not really so. They were stylish, droll comedies that were flavored with thrills, and Connery played Bond as an understated comic character. Maybe that's why George Lazenby and Roger Moore never quite filled Connery's shoes as Bond; they played 007 too straight.

Sutherland, playing a Victorian pickpocket and key duplicator (using wax impressions), is Connery's perfect partner for The Great Train Robbery. He brings a new mannerism or two to almost every movie he makes, and this time there's a low whistle, a popping of the fingers, as they engineer their way into the safe with the army payroll. Down plays Connery's accomplice and lover, and she seems to have been born to wear Victorian knickers.

The plan for the robbery is pretty straightforward: The train's safe, containing the gold, is locked with four keys. The keys are in different hands. The challenge is to separate the owners from their keys, preferably in circumstances that properly staid Victorian gentlemen would be loath to describe to the police. So one elderly banker is stalked at a dog vs. rat fight and another is compromised in a brothel.

There's also a stopwatch scene for the caper fans: Connery and Sutherland go through several dry runs before attempting to break into the office of the railway company, where two of the keys are stored, and we get a nicely choreographed robbery attempt with all the classic touches (guard appears in view a split-second after the crucial moment, etc.).

One of the pleasures of The Great Train Robbery is the way it's firmly in the Victorian period. The costumes and the art direction are right, Crichton peppers his dialog with, no doubt, authentic Victorian underworld phraseology, and, for the climactic train robbery scene, the production company even built an entire working train. Other pleasures include the wicked trick used to smuggle Sutherland into the locked car with the gold, Connery’s scene on top of the train, and, of course, the exquisite presence of Down, who has a bedroom scene with Connery that makes James Bond look curiously like Sherlock Holmes [Ebert’s rating: *** out of 4 stars]

Labels: adventure, crime, drama, period, thriller



No comments:

Post a Comment