This is an English bank heist film.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a good one.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n The movie opens up with a man emerging from a London manhole cover dressed in proper evening attire and driving away in a Rolls Royce.\u00a0 That should set the tone for the movie.\u00a0 This same man, retired Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde, is next seen cutting some five-pound banknotes in half and mailing the halves along with a paperback book about a bank heist called the \u201cGolden Fleece\u201d to seven different men.\u00a0 Next, we meet each of these men as they receive their packages.\u00a0 Each is a retired military officer.<\/p>\n Major Peter Race is now living as a down on his luck gambler.<\/p>\n Captain “Padre” Mycroft is a confidence man pretending to be a vicar.<\/p>\n Lieutenant Edward Lexy, played by a much younger Richard Attenborough, is an electronics technician who does side jobs \u201cfixing slot machines for racketeers to shortchange the winners.<\/p>\n Captain Martin Porthill is a gigolo living off the largesse from middle-aged women<\/p>\n Captain Stevens is a homosexual masseuse.<\/p>\n Major Rupert Rutland-Smith is a piano player barely getting by.<\/p>\n Captain Frank Weaver is an unhappily married man.<\/p>\n Hyde is contacting each of them because they were dishonorably discharged from the military and therefore unable to make a good living in the civilian world.\u00a0 He wants to offer them a share in a bank heist that he is planning.\u00a0 Each of them has an expertise that will contribute to the success of his military style mission to rob a bank of a million pounds from which each will get an equal share.\u00a0 One is an expert in explosives, another in communications, another a procurement expert who can forge car and truck license plates.\u00a0 Two of them are combat veterans who are well trained in crowd control and unafraid to kill. \u00a0One is adept at hotwiring and stealing cars.\u00a0 All have a desire to escape their present lives and live happily ever off of one enormous payday.<\/p>\n They all sign on with Major Race as Hyde\u2019s second in command.\u00a0 Their first objective is to steal enough weapons and explosives from a British military base to outfit the heist.\u00a0 The men follow an ingenious plan of Hyde\u2019s to decoy the personnel of the base with a phony inspection by top brass while the rest of the crew pillage the arsenal.<\/p>\n After this success the team moves forward on the plan.\u00a0 They steal the vehicles they\u2019ll need for the robbery.\u00a0 They assemble the explosives and the jamming devices.\u00a0 And they work out the schedule down to the minute.\u00a0 And as soon as the armored car leaves the bank and turns the corner, the team springs the trap.\u00a0 The utility shafts that house the alarm and phone lines are blown, the air outside the bank is filled with dense smoke and the team raids the bank brandishing machine guns.\u00a0 They quickly wheel away the cart from the armored car delivery with the twenty boxes each containing fifty thousand pounds and escape with the money.<\/p>\n But completely coincidentally a little boy had copied down the license plate number of the getaway truck.\u00a0 Later that day we see Hyde distributing the money to the team at his hideout.\u00a0 The mood is celebratory. \u00a0One by one the team members take their cut of the loot and leave.\u00a0 When only Hyde and Race are left, a call comes in on the telephone.\u00a0 It\u2019s Scotland Yard and they order them to come out and give themselves up.\u00a0 Hyde demands to know which of the team turned them in.\u00a0 Instead, they find out about the little boy and the license plates.<\/p>\n When they are escorted into the police-wagon we see the rest of the team already captured and manacled together.<\/p>\n I found this old bank heist movie a hidden gem.\u00a0 I\u2019d never heard of it and despite its \u201cancient\u201d origin it was very well done, both in terms of the acting and the heist details.\u00a0 The camaraderie of these total strangers is somewhat reminiscent of such military movies as \u201cThe Dirty Dozen\u201d and \u201cThe Great Escape.\u201d\u00a0 But in this case the battle is a crime.\u00a0 I highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes a good heist movie and to the general viewer of quality cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an English bank heist film.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a good one. (Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[3166,636,43,38,1355,3374],"class_list":["post-21028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-british-cinema","tag-military","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-richard-attenborough"],"yoast_head":"\n