Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

hyped garbage

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Three trucks filled with extremely heavy bricks of solid gold, stolen from a fast moving train in the most clever way, becomes the caper of the century in this fraught with tension action drama where veteran actors Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook Jr. and several others make an attempt to transport it without being caught. As soon as the train theft is discovered, police across the nation are notified, and every highway is being scoped for the culprits. This becomes riveting simply to watch the five men in various states of paranoia in three different trucks driving down these highways of potential destruction, their lone thoughts driving each of them crazy in different ways. Cook is the most thoughtful of the five, planning to take his son down to Rio to start a new life, practically certain of his success, and even getting the viewer to sort of feel sorry for them. Raymond has a girl (Jeanne Cooper) waiting for him at the end of the line for the final stretch, but for a few of them, their road isn't paved with gold; It is paved with doom.Yes, the Jeanne Cooper I mention above is the same Jeanne Cooper who schemed and loved and clicked her well manicured nails together for four decades as the wealthy and powerful Katharine Chancellor on "The Young and the Restless". She only pops up for the last twenty minutes of the film, but makes the most of her scenes, especially as she reveals how she wishes that her lover had not stooped to theft to make their dreams come true. But the fact that she obviously abandons a job to help him shows her as complicit, and she even goes as far as to help push the gold up large loading slides, showing that she's made of stronger stuff than most women, yet not as quite as evil as the great film noir femme fatales. If you want to see Ms. Cooper really in action on the big screen, check her out in the prison drama "House of Women" where she goes up against "Another World's" Constance Ford with a great cat fight.While this film is tense and riveting at times, it also often becomes an absurd look as to why crime doesn't pay and the desperate measures criminals take to get away with their latest caper yet are constantly paranoid of what the end will bring. It is like they know that they will be caught. Only fools run in the face of arrest, and often that spells a meeting with the grim reaper. Raymond, Cooper and his young partner (Steven Ritch) go through so much in the last few reels that watching them makes you see how absurd it all is, that no heist is easy, and that when it all comes out in the open, they are not going to go down without some gunfire. In general, this is a pretty good caper action/thriller that is obvious as to how it will end, but what makes it unique is how each of the criminals reveals some of their back story to indicate what brought them to such desperation, and how their own inner psyche manipulates their individual destinies.

'Plunder road' opens with a long, rather complicated train robbery in the dark and rain which is quite terrific. Then follows the execution of the getaway plan, in which the loot (loads of heavy gold) is transferred into three different trucks, which all go their separate ways for a while. Plotwise, I may have missed something, because I thought they were all headed straight for the border, but one truck ends up in Los Angeles. This is a tense heist film, although the flaws in the getaway plan(s) are quite obvious; when Eddie speaks of gold bending easily, while they have just made car bumpers (with a little chrome to cover it) out of them, you just knów there's going to be an accident. And that silly guy who leaves the police radio on... these hardly seem like the clever and tough criminals they are initially made out to be. Such things are rather easily forgiven though, with all the terrific action and loads of entertaining dialogue (especially Elisha Cook Jr.'s talk about Rio and his son). Furthermore, 'Plunder road' is somewhat understated and subtle in its ways, which is a big plus also.A small 8 out of 10.

***SPOILLERS*** Pulling off the biggest-10 million dollars worth-train robbery in history was the easy part but being able to get it-the gold-out of the country was a lot more difficulty to the train robbers who pulled it off. Splitting up in two trucks and one oil tanker the five desperado's lead by man of the hour Eddie, Gene Raymond,, and his partner former race driver Frankie, Steven Rich, make a run for it to L.A where their to convert the cold into spear parts for their cars to avoid detection by the police. On the way to L.A one of the robbers Roly Adams, Stefford Repp, has his police radio turned when the police check his truck and panics ending up getting shot as he on the run turned to shoot at them.It's Skeets, Elisha Cook Jr., and his driving partner Commando,Wayne Morris, who when they stopped to get gas become involved in the murder of an elderly gas station attendant, who's social security check alone can't pay the bills, who noticed Commando dropping his gun who in return iced the old man from keeping him from talking to the police. It wasn't long that a police road block had the two arrested and later face not only a robbery but murder charge. It's now Eddie & Frankie who are on the run who make it to L.A where Eddie's girlfriend Fran, Jeanne Cooper, is waiting for them with a getaway car,***SPOILERS***Packing the car with gold fenders- that was smelted at Fran's garage- it's now just a matter of time for the trio-Eddie Frankie & Fran-to get on a boat going to, via the Panama Canal, Libson Portugal where, in them being able to speak Portuguese, they will be home sweet home free. That's until a fender bender on the L.A freeway by an absent minded feather brained woman driver put a wrench into their perfect crime. Frankie making a run for it is shot by the highway police and Eddie, the brains of the outfit, tries to make his getaway by jumping off an overpass and ends up getting crushed when an 18 wheeler runs over him. As for Fran she survives but will be spending time in prison not on the sunny beaches of Lisbon sipping wine and and getting sun tanned like she planned to do with her late lover Eddie.

Plunder Road is directed by Hubert Cornfield and written by Steven Ritch and Jack Charney. It stars Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook Jr. and Stafford Repp. Music is by Irving Gertz and cinematography by Ernest Haller.After pulling off a daring train hold-up, a gang of thieves split up and hit the roads to meet up in Los Angeles in readiness to share their gold bullion spoils...A poverty row heist noir late in the classic cycle, Plunder Road gets in and does its job without fuss and filler and with no little style. Running at just 72 minutes in length, the first portion of film is devoted to the intricate robbery that is set at night in the sheeting rain and with barely a word spoken. It's meticulous planning, and thus this appears to be one highly tuned and professional gang of thieves. The rest of the film follows the gang, now travelling in three different vehicles, heading straight to noirville as their inadequacies and paranoia's come to the fore and noir's old faithful friend the vagaries of fate shows it's smirking face.Cornfield and Haller (Mildred Pierce/The Verdict) atmospherically photograph the picture, using the Scope format to emphasise the impending implosion of the characters' plans as they move through the various locales and situations. It's solidly performed by the cast, with old noir hand Cook Junior doing what he does best, and Cornfield manages to eek out much suspense from what essentially is a simple story. The ending is all a bit too quick and naturally some contrivances are to be taken with a pinch of salt, but this is a good and enjoyable viewing experience even though it doesn't push towards the upper echelons of other heist movies in the film noir universe. 7/10