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Sean Connery and Lesley-Anne Down grab a train ride in The First Great Train Robbery |
Director: Michael Crichton
Cast: Sean Connery (Edward Pierce), Donald Sutherland
(Robert Agar), Lesley-Anne Down (Miriam) Alan Webb (Trent), Malcolm Terris
(Henry Fowler), Robert Lang (Inspector Sharp), Michael Elphick (Burgess), Wayne
Sleep (Clean Willy), Pamela Salem (Emily Trent), Gabrielle Lloyd (Elizabeth
Trent), James Cossins (Harranby), André Morell (Judge)
When you think about Michael Crichton, it’s easy to forget he
had many more strings to his bow than just writing airport plot boilers. He
created ER, he wrote and directed a
number of films (most famously WestWorld)
– and one of his best books is actually a piece of semi-history, The Great Train Robbery. This book – a
brilliantly researched and entertaining part history, part fictionalisation –
covers the story of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855, a train-based gold heist.
Crichton’s film of this book takes a slightly different tone
– its realism is toned down slightly, its nose-thumbing anti-establishmentism
shaved off, in favour of a lighter comic farce, a caper movie. It makes for an
enjoyable movie – but it’s less interesting than the book’s documentary realism
and its careful construction of the vast number of obstacles the criminals
needed to ingeniously overcome.
Edward Pierce (Sean Connery) is a professional criminal who
can pose as an upper-class gent. Having befriended a number of senior people
from a leading city bank, he plans a daring heist on a train carrying gold from
London to Dover – gold bound for the Crimean war. Pierce puts together a
detailed plan – that involves gaining possession of copies of four keys
essential for getting access to the safe on the train containing the gold – and
recruits a team including expert locksmith and pickpocket Robert Agar (Donald
Sutherland) and cunning courtesan Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down).
The First Great Train
Robbery is a caper – and it has all the structure and energy you would
expect. From Jerry Goldsmith’s lyrical score to the framing device that
constantly returns to Pierce’s key box getting fuller and fuller (like fingers
flying up when recruiting The Magnificent
Seven), the whole shebang is told with real lightness. Nothing is too
serious – the criminals’ actions aren’t designed to hurt anyone (apart from one
of their number who turns informant) – and the overall mood is a lark, with the
criminals engaging in a boys’ own adventure.
This is helped by the excellent light-comedic playing from
Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland as the two main architects of the crime.
Connery uses his smoothness (hiding a chippy edge) extremely well – he’s the
charming man you’d want to spend time with, and he wraps you up in his own
sense of fun. Any obstacles are usually met with a wry smile – like some sort
of period Danny Ocean, Pierce is always one-step ahead of the game. Sutherland
– with an odd, half Irish accent – makes a very good put-upon wingman,
grumbling but still enjoying the ride.
Most of the rest of the cast don’t make much of an impact.
Lesley Anne-Down gets some comedic business – particularly a seduction that is
designed to go wrong to gain possession of a key – but not a lot else to do.
Malcolm Terris and Alan Webb bluster as arrogant dupes. Robert Lang growls as
an angry cop. Wayne Sleep of all people pops up as an expert burglar.
The film sweeps from set-up to set-up, very competently
filmed, with some decent design and photography (it was the last film of
legendary photographer Geoffrey Unsworth). Crichton is a decent director, and
if some moments look a bit dated or are a little too much (some make-up for
Sutherland at one point looks rubbish) it’s still pretty good.
The real problem is that you lose the sense that,
by-and-large, a lot of this actually happened – I mean, sure, it was probably
with less banter and jokes, but people really did a lot of this stuff. The film
doesn’t always dwell enough on the problems the thieves face, and doesn’t
always explain why these obstacles are so vital to overcome. It misses a trick here with its eagerness to keep barrelling forward.
What this means is that film sometimes misses the sense of
triumph and satisfaction of overcoming real hurdles – or the frisson of having
it clear that a lot of these were real solutions that a real person came up
with. The film also rushes its final conclusions. Historically we don’t know
what happened to the gold and there was a trial of some of those involved – but
the film never really makes that clear. Its conclusion zeroes in again on some
hi-jinks, but it doesn’t really make clear the impact, the consequences or what
happened to the Macguffin at its centre. You also don’t get the sense of
hypocrisy the book mines so well, with the corruption of the upper classes
being glossed over by society, but the thievery of the working classes being
outright condemned. I missed that a lot from the film - fun as it is.
It’s an entertaining film but, to be honest, it’s not as
good as the book – which is actually really worth a read. Crichton is a man
with more talent than people give him credit for.
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