Robbery (1967)

The Worst Film Ever

Simply Perfect

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A Major Disappointment

Robbery is directed by Peter Yates and adapted to screenplay by Yates, Edward Boyd and George Markstein from The Robber's Tale written by Peta Fordham. It stars Stanley Baker, James Booth, Frank Finlay, Joanna Pettet, Barry Foster, William Marlowe, George Sewell and Clinton Greyn. Music is by Johnny Keating and cinematography by Douglas Slocombe.As tough as steel toe capped docker boots, Robbery is a fictionalised take on the Great Train Robbery of 1963 that saw the London to Glasgow mail train stripped of its £2.6 million hold. It was a robbery seen as daring and near genius in its meticulous planning and execution. Coming out just four years after the real event, Peter Yates' film takes the skeleton facts of the real robbery and builds a dramatic carcass around it.Film is structured in three stages, firstly is a scintillating diamond robbery that introduces us to some of the major players in the train robbery to follow. This is fronted by an adrenalin pumping car chase that stands as one of the finest ever put to celluloid, kinetic and with inventive use of camera work, it's set to almost no dialogue and is car choreography of the highest order. Steve McQueen was so impressed he promptly arranged to have Yates summoned to Hollywood to direct Bullit.The second part of the picture and the meaty middle section of the tale, concentrates on the movers and shakers in the robbery. The planning of the event, the gathering of various criminal London factions, their meetings, arguments, frets and worries, even a scenario that sees ringleader Paul Clifton (Baker) arrange to have a currency expert broken out of prison. All the time while this is happening, as the various crooks move about various London locations such as bars, clubs, football grounds and abodes etc, we are also following the police side of things. The kicker here is that the police, led by Inspector George Langdon (Booth), know that something big is being planned, and by who, but they don't know what and have to bite their nails waiting for a break or for the event to actually happen!Finally the third part is the robbery itself and the aftermath involving the robbers hiding out, scattering to the wind as the cops close in. The robbery is edge of the seat brilliance, cunning in its execution and filmed with such gritty realism it really grabs the attention wholesale. The climax played out at a disused airfield is also exciting and such is the fact that previously we have been firmly tuned into the main characters on both sides of the law, we are fully immersed into what will become of them all.Yates and his cast are on fine form, with Baker and Booth excellent, in fact the film positively bristles with British beef at times! Slocombe's photography strips it back to basics, suitably so to imbue that documentary feel, and Keating's score thunders away like a criminal accomplice at times. While fans of 60s London as a period backdrop can't fail to feel well fed after film's end. Pettet's wife of Clifton angle feels under nourished, and the whole middle section inevitably fails to sustain the tempo created by that exhilarating first quarter of film, but small irritants only they be. For Robbery is a British Bulldog of a movie, its biceps bulging, its brain clicking into gear, in short, it's a cracker! 8/10

This is one of the best crime capers that you'll ever see, and it is based on a real-life event about several resourceful robbers who looted a British Royal Mail train in August 1963. Peter Yates never lets the suspense and the tension to lapse in this crackling good thriller. Steve McQueen took one look at this vintage thriller and knew that he had to have Yates at the helm of his classic cop saga "Bullitt." You won't find a better real-life hold-up movie. Of course, the filmmakers have taken certain liberties despite the fact that a train was robbed. Stanley Baker plays Paul Clifton, the man who masterminded the complex robbery. Yates covers the meticulous planning that went into the actual robbery. You won't forget this timeless thriller.

Most of the other commentators have hit this one on the head.There's plenty of tense action from the beginning. The car chase through the streets of London after a botched jewel-heist is quite excellent. I don't think it has been bettered except by those of 'Ronin'. What is so spectacular about this chase is that it doesn't just focus on the participants as most other movies do. Here are real streets with other real vehicles and pedestrians. They are human and relevant, and not just props of convenience. The multiple cutting between furiously speeding cars and a peaceful school-crossing patrol is particularly memorable, as indeed are the consequences. We observe one of these unfortunates stricken with hysteria by her near-death experience. Once again; other movies treat bystanders as inconsequential accident-fodder rather than vulnerable people who suffer and die. Considering the age of this movie it's a hell of an act to beat.After that, the plot assumes a fairly detailed parody of the infamous 'Great Train Robbery'. Most of the rent-a-mob stalwarts of the period can be spotted somewhere, with the excellent Stanley Baker giving it his baddie-best. And, of course, there's that wonderful old icon, the 3.4 litre Jaguar, standard road-tool of the 1960's villain.  Yes; it is a bit dated now - especially as regards the language used. But that was a matter for the censors not the movie-makers. The likes of Mary Whitehouse have a lot to answer for.Give it a go if you haven't seen it. So long as you take its age into account, you're sure of a racy, if slightly nostalgic time.And while you're about it; you could check-out the slightly earlier 'Payroll'. There's another oldie that still hasn't lost its ginger.

Interesting flick that starts out in thumping swingin' sixties style, the opening half-hour is all class as a meticulously planned diamond heist is carried out by a cool gang of sharp-suited sixties types, followed by a storming car-chase round the streets of London. The fact that this car chase is sparked by there just happening to be a police car passing by as the gang transfer from their van to a getaway car is a clue as to what is to follow - rather reliant on coincidence, and some appalling dialogue, the rest of the film is a little disappointing but never less than reasonable crime-action story, full of faces familiar to UK TV viewers, including a young and sprightly looking George Sewell, and a baby-faced Robert Powell, before his Italian Job work and way before his eighties Hannays. Speaking of the Italian Job, a lot of the style of this film is very similar to that classic, and you can't help but think some of the ideas here influenced the makers of Caine's finest hour (a mini coming down a ramp out of the back of a speeding truck, anyone?). Not a bad film, fascinating for anyone interested in the period and genre, with its cast of faces, selection of classic motors and often hilariously dated dialogue, this is well worth a watch, but no great classic.