Blueprint for Robbery (1961)
A gang of career criminals plots the robbery of an armored car company's headquarters. Although the robbery itself goes off as planned, it's not long before the gang members are fighting among themselves over everybody's share of the loot and trying to avoid capture by the police, who are pouring all their resources into capturing the robbers. Based on a real-life 1950 Brinks Armored Car Co. robbery in Boston.
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Admirable film.
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
No director but Jerry Hopper could make a film as dull as this one out of such promising material. The screenplay by Irwin Winehouse and A. Sanford Wolf is based on the famous robbery of Brinks' express office at Boston in 1950 in which eleven masked bandits escaped with nearly three million dollars. However, anyone expecting an American "Rififi" will be badly disappointed by this effort. Not only is the film's central character, as delineated by J. O'Malley, an uninteresting bore (we would like to have seen more of Chips McGann, so effectively played by Robert Gist who later became a director (e.g. "An American Dream"), but no such luck. As I said above, right to the very end, Jerry Hopper's direction contrives to be dull, dull, dull all the way. And he spins it out for 87 minutes too!
I watched some of the scenes being filmed for this movie in 1960 when I worked at Barker Brothers warehouse. That is in Los Angeles, not Boston. The building at 530 Molina at the intersection of Palmetto Street in the Warehouse District East of Alameda Street was the location for the Brink's building. Barker Brothers warehouse is across the street from there. The scenes looking out the hotel window at the building being robbed were filmed from a furniture warehouse. You can Google the 530 address and see that the building is still there and Barker Brothers old closed warehouse which was supposed to be the hotel ground floor entrance is also still there. The building North of there was also used as the hotel exterior. The movie rings true throughout. It has good characters and many familiar character actors appearing in this fast paced black and white film. The production is not cheap but it is primitive compared to today's explosion circus atmosphere norm. I highly recommend this if you like the old Cagney/Bogart/Raft movies. Look for great old cars that were new at the time the movie was being made.
I am a great lover of caper - heist - movies. And this one is a very good as rare too. It is based on a true story, the Brink's robbery that took place in Boston in 1950. William Friedkin and Marvin Chomsky already made films about this affair.It tells with many details how the hoods proceed to steal the bullion. There is not really a leading character in this story, not great actors either. And it makes it more interesting.It is however a grade B movie, shot with a tiny budget. Do not expect car chases and gunfights.I am surprised that no other IMDb user has commented it yet.I recommend it for those who can catch it on a TV broadcast these days.