Verdict
Summary
A bit overlong at 110 minutes, but still fun and quite exciting, especially during the train siege that had star Connery literally doing all his own stunts, which you can see with your own eyes (straight up Tom Cruise Mission Impossible stuff), The Great Train Robbery has aged well and holds up thanks to appealing performances and a steady hand by director / screenwriter / author Michael Crichton. The score by Jerry Goldsmith helps a great deal as well as it adds a sprightly and classy texture to an already handsome production.
Plot:
Two ungentlemanly gentlemen plan an impossible moving train heist of tons of gold bars.
Review:
Before the days when bandits would rob moving trains, an English gentleman named Pierce (Sean Connery) conceives of the unthinkable: He will assemble a crew of rogues and plan and execute an impossible robbery while on a moving train. The score will be tons of gold bars, a pricey payroll headed to the Crimea to pay British soldiers fighting Russia. The scheme seems utterly inconceivable because without four keys held by four designated people, the plan won’t work. So, Pierce aligns himself with a master waxwork artist named Agar (Donald Sutherland) whom he will rely on to make wax molds of each of the four keys as they come into contact with them. Pierce also relies on his regular gal Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down, never more beautiful) who allows Pierce to use her as a pretend prostitute and various other disguises to cleverly procure at least one of the four keys during their daring attempt at collecting all the keys as needed. Once they’ve attained wax molds of all four of the keys, they next plan the heist itself, which involves Agar posing as a corpse in a casket, Miriam as his bereaved sister, and Pierce traversing the roof of the train in a brave run for the money. When they’ve got the gold, the next trick is escaping with it all.
A bit overlong at 110 minutes, but still fun and quite exciting, especially during the train siege that had star Connery literally doing all his own stunts, which you can see with your own eyes (straight up Tom Cruise Mission Impossible stuff), The Great Train Robbery has aged well and holds up thanks to appealing performances and a steady hand by director / screenwriter / author Michael Crichton. The score by Jerry Goldsmith helps a great deal as well as it adds a sprightly and classy texture to an already handsome production.
Kino Lorber has just reissued The Great Train Robbery onto a special edition Blu-ray that looks pretty sharp in its high definition transfer, and it comes with an archival commentary by Crichton, plus the trailer and TV spots, and a slipcover.
