1967
Peter Yates
IMDB Score: 6.9 (29/8/14)
Synopsis:
Based on the 1963 Great Train Robbery this film takes to wildly different tacks with the story. The actual robbery itself is based on the court records from the original trial but the rest of the story is almost all total fiction.
Protagonists & Assessment
This was Peter Yates third film after the Cliff Richard vehicle Summer Holiday (a frothy musical on Cliff''s journey in a big red bus to the South of France) and One Way Pendulum (an absurdist comedy starring Eric Sykes that is near impossible to find). He's started his career in the film industry as an Assistant Director or Second Unit Director on a string of fine films Sons and Lovers, The Entertainer, Guns of Navarone and A Taste of Honey. Everything from period drama, to action adventure to kitchen sink drama. He must have impressed as Tony Richardson (director of The Entertainer and A Taste of Honey) as his company, Woodfall Films, produced One Way Pendulum. Even with all that experience this really isn't a very good film; whether it was because of a poor script or having one of the lead stars, Stanley Baker, as Producer and instigator of the project is not known but apart from the actual robbery (which is only good not great) it disappoints.
Robbery shares a common theme with The Day Of The Jackal in that it was widely known, at the time of the films' releases, that bad guys didn't get away with it; so both films take the procedural route by focussing on the how's of a criminal enterprise and the police investigation. There's no point having a "are they going to get away with it" tension because the audience should know the outcome (which begs the question - would it be reasonable to ask the viewer to understand the basics of De Gaulle or the Great Train Robbery before watching? Would being ignorant of the then reality change ones perception of the film?). That's not to say that there's no tension or action. But whereas The Day of The Jackal does this skillfully with a believable lead, Robbery is shallow, leaden and dull in nearly all departments; script, acting and direction; it looks like it was made in the 1950's.
Bastard Babylon
A couple of flowery shirts and a robber who works in a clothes boutique are the only indicators to a swinging London. In so many ways London doesn't look much different today apart from the buildings are no longer covered in soot and the signage and street furniture are different. After this film Yates was chosen by Steve McQueen to direct Bullitt. I should think it had more to do with the excellent car chase scene in Robbery over anything else. Bullitt is pretty tame for an English first time director in Hollywood when compared to John Boorman's Point Blank the year before.
One of it's failures is that it is not judgemental on the robbers, they come across as generally nice people who don't use shooters (because it triples the sentence - a wry observation that the robbers know and accept the risks). As if robbing a train was normal job. The Police are also painted as whiter than white.
It's a realistic portrait of the city but an unrealistic portrait of the before and afters of the crime and this is where it falls down - those parts are just dull.
Under Sevens
I think the current IMDB score of 6.9 is a bit generous.
