A different way of telling a story

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The Great Train Robbery follows the standard heist movie blueprint. The team gets assembled to pull off an impossible job, they do all of the complicated prep work, then there is a last minute complication that makes it much more difficult than they expected. What stands out here is the setting, Victorian England, and the much smaller crew of thieves than usual. Most heist movies have a huge crew of 10+ characters that each need to have their characters explored. Here there is just the mastermind (Sean Connery), the pickpocket (Donald Sutherland), the girl (Lesley-Anne Downs), and the greaseman (Wayne Sleep). There are a few others, but their characters are so minor that they do not even get names. Rather than get sidetracked covering side characters, there is a strong focus on moving the plot forward that makes the entire movie more interesting.What also stands out is the impressive stunts that were done mostly without stuntmen. Wayne Sleep really scales a wall and Sean Connery really walks across the top of a moving train. In today's CGI heavy film industry, it is refreshing to see an older movie that stays simpler with its big stunts, but they feel much realer, because they are. A lot of the movie relies on Sean Connery's natural charisma, which is the secret to a good heist movie, and Connery holds up very well compared to Clooney and Sinatra in the Ocean's movies and Newman and Redford in The Sting.

Based on the 1975 novel "The Great Train Robbery" by Michael Crichton who adapted it for the screen and directed the film, this is an enormously enjoyable caper film. The original was inspired by the Great Gold Robbery of 1855 in which William Pierce and his accomplices stole £12,000 worth of gold bullion (being used to finance the Crimean War) from a train on the London to Folkestone line. However, both the novel and the film were apparently highly fictionalised and owe little to the real event beyond the basics of the scheme. The film has an extremely clever and engaging script with a great undercurrent of wit, particularly in the first half. It is a beautiful looking film which Crichton directs with a real sense of style, flair and panache. It was filmed on location in Ireland and features several places that I recognised such as Heuston Station (where I was only yesterday), Bank of Ireland in College Green and Trinity College, which is featured in the wonderful final scene. The hugely impressive climactic train sequence was shot on the now closed Mullingar to Athlone line. Mullingar is only 25 miles from where I grew up and I went to secondary school in Athlone.The film stars Sean Connery in an excellent performance as Edward Pierce, who presents himself as being a "sharp businessman" and respectable, upstanding member of society but is really a gentleman master thief of the old mould. He plotted to get his hands on the £25,000 in gold for one plain and simple reason: he wanted the money. I like that as there really doesn't need to be anything more to it than that for the film to be entertaining. Crichton knew better than to bog the script down with uninteresting subplots about people trying to do the right thing or escape a life of crime. Pierce is a very interesting, world weary and cynical character but I sometimes got the feeling that we never really got to see the real him, even when he was in the company of his co-conspirators. After some hesitation, he tells his mistress Miriam, played very well by Lesley-Anne Down, that he intends for them to go to Paris with their share of the gold after the robbery but I'm not entirely convinced that he was telling the truth. Pierce plays his cards close to his chest and it is often hard to tell exactly what he is thinking, which is certainly a useful character trait for someone in his line of work. However, I think that having Pierce arrange for Clean Willy to be murdered after he ratted to the police was a mistake as, while certainly realistic, it does not really fit in the film's rather light-hearted tone and the fact that Pierce is basically a lovable rogue.Donald Sutherland gives a great performance as Robert Agar, an expert pickpocket and safe-cracker (otherwise known as a "screwsman"). I have always thought that Sutherland is one of the best actors of his generation and, while he does not have the same opportunity to show that as in his more serious films like "Ordinary People" (for which he should have received an Oscar nomination incidentally), he is never less than completely entertaining on this occasion. I just love watching him and listening to that distinctive voice of his. Speaking of which, I don't know what nationality the real Agar was or the fictionalised one is supposed to be, more to the point, but there are small traces of an Irish accent here and there. Considering that his full blown Irish accent in "The Eagle Has Landed" was not great, it was probably for the best that he decided to reign it in here. Connery and Sutherland had fantastic chemistry and it is such a shame that this was their only film together as they made for a very entertaining duo.The film has a comparatively small but strong supporting cast. Alan Webb is very good as Edgar Trent, who holds one of the four vital keys used to unlock the safes storing the gold. In some respects, he is similar to Pierce as he is less reputable than he appears to the outside world, given his involvement in rat-baiting. Pamela Salem, later the Miss Moneypenny to Connery's James Bond in "Never Say Never Again", has a very entertaining cameo as Trent's considerably younger second wife Emily. One of my favourite scenes is Pierce and Emily's innuendo-laden conversation about a waterwheel and construction in general as the dialogue is razor sharp. It also features nice performances from Michael Elphick, Robert Lang and James Cossins with Malcolm Terris in the fairly prominent supporting role as Henry Fowler being the weakest link. This was the final film of two fantastic actors, André Morell and Peter Butterworth, both of whom sadly died shortly before it was released.Overall, this is enormous fun from start to finish. They don't make 'em like this anymore!

I remember that in 1979, this was the first movie I paid five dollars for--and I didn't feel cheated. It's a lavish, energetic period crime caper, based on fact, about a daring band of rogues, led by a dapper Sean Connery, plotting an elaborate plan to pilfer gold bars bound for Crimea. Michael Crichton, adapting his own novel, piles on the wit, and directs with more panache than he'd shown before. It's beautifully shot by (and dedicated to) Geoffrey Unsworth, and scored with great Victorian relish by Jerry Goldsmith. Lesley Anne Down is a luscious accomplice, and Donald Sutherland, as a not-too-bright but eager duplicator of ill-gotten keys, is charming in a self- effacing role. It doesn't hang together perfectly, and a couple of times I felt the decent Londoners standing in this bunch's way were being a little too easily duped--they can't have been as naive as all that. Nevertheless, it's a lively entertainment that allows you to pull for the crooks without feeling the least hypocritical.

Writing and directing The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton took much license with the facts of the story's basis, mostly to incorporate a tone of sardonic humor and mean-spirited mustachioed grinning. Sir Sean Connery has always been a great light comedian, having played Bond as a discreetly comic character. That's probably why Lazenby and Moore never totally matched him: They played 007 too orthodox. In Connery's charismatic oeuvre, master safecracker Edward Pierce is no exception.The inimitable Donald Sutherland, playing a Victorian pickpocket and con man, is somewhat miscast as Connery's partner. He is not convincingly English, to my surprise frankly, though he does bring a new characteristic or two to virtually each film he's in, and here he's not just Connery's cohort but his foil. Leslie Ann Down plays Connery's moll and co-conspirator, and she appears to have been preordained to wear Victorian undergarments.The plot for the heist is rather upfront: The train's safe, containing the gold, is protected with four keys, each in different hands. The challenge is to divide these holders from their keys, if possible in scenarios that serious, by-the-book Victorian gentlemen would be opposed to explaining to the police, so one aged banker is shadowed at a dogfight and another is intercepted in a brothel. There's also a Stopwatch Sequence for caper enthusiasts like me: Connery and Sutherland undergo numerous trials before endeavoring to burglarize the railway company office, and we get a gracefully stage-managed robbery effort with all the timeless taps like the guard reappearing a nanosecond after the critical moment and such.One of the foremost amusements of this drum-tight caper is the way it's determinedly in the Victorian era. The costumes and the art direction are sincere, Crichton infuses his dialogue with undoubtedly genuine Victorian gangland wording, and, for the climactic train heist, they even constructed a whole operational train. Other gratifications: The nefarious deception used to smuggle Connery into the protected car with the gold; the chase sequence atop the train; and, certainly, the loin-scorchingly superb presence of Down, who is wryly funny in her own right.An ornately thorough and exciting caper that parades historical accuracy in support of the tempting charisma of gentleman scoundrels up to no good. Connery and Sutherland are unscrupulous to their foundations but full of audacity and shrewdness. We're supportive of them all the way, with their dashing top hats, rustling coat-tails and panorama of facial hair.There's a patent two-act structure to the proficient script. Crichton has a scientist's sensitivity to exactitude. First the crack team toil through the preparation phases, as they progressively appropriate indentations of the four keys necessary to unlock the safe, resulting in the heist itself on a train tearing through the British scenery. In the course of this era of steam power, it appeared a hopeless scheme. Meek, perhaps, by the wicked tempo of modern action sequences, Crichton nevertheless infuses a rousing realism with Connery mannishly performing his own stunts as he traverses the rooftop through clouds of grimy smoke, for the golden fleece.All around, Crichton absorbs the tissue and texture of whimsical Victoriana from the bitter brick walls of the prison for Wayne Sleep's lithe prison escape to the plush, glossy furnishings of the brothel where the sexy Down slips a key from Alan Webb's frenziedly horny bank manager. But naturalism is not the approach, Crichton is after a giddy attribute like it's being told as a tall story in a pub sopping in overstatement and heightened deceit to whitewash impractical snags.