Simply A Masterpiece

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Must watch it for impeccable script & direction of Michael Crichton .Sean Connery again at top notch performance...

Director Michael Crichtons' adaptation of his own novel (inspired by a real life incident) is a smashing success, making the most of superlative performances, a neat premise, real filmmaking skill, great Irish scenery, and very fine period recreation. It takes place in 1855 England, when a dapper gentleman, Pierce (a typically charismatic Sean Connery) plots to rob a large shipment of gold from a moving train! His co-conspirators are Miriam (lovely Lesley- Anne Down) and Agar (Donald Sutherland), and among other things, they will have to locate four different keys and make wax impressions of them."The First Great Train Robbery" (shortened to "The Great Train Robbery" for North American release) is great fun, placing a delicious and ingenious caper in a period piece. It's fascinating to watch our principals concoct various schemes, and go to such great lengths to learn what they need to do. What is always part of the entertainment in any caper or heist film is watching it play out like a procedural of sorts. Crichton is also adept at crafting tension, particularly in one sequence that relies on that familiar, and oft visited (for good reason) story trope of characters having to "beat a clock". The action scenes (directed by Dick Ziker) are likewise first rate, especially towards the end when Pierce must manoeuvre aboard the top of this speeding train. He has a myriad of overhanging bridges to duck under!Crichton and company (including the talented cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, to whom the film is dedicated) create a vivid world in which there may not be a lot of primary colors, but there are lots of striking visuals. Crichton doesn't miss opportunities for humor: there are some absolutely hilarious sexual double entendres, and poor Sutherland has to submit to a highly disgusting method of being smuggled aboard the train. It's all enhanced by the music of the extremely talented Jerry Goldsmith.Connery, Sutherland, and Down make a wonderful team, and there are no slouches in the supporting cast, either. Alan Webb, Malcolm Terris, Robert Lang, Michael Elphick, Wayne Sleep, Pamela Salem (who later played Moneypenny in Connery's James Bond comeback vehicle "Never Say Never Again"), and Gabrielle Lloyd co-star, with James Cossins, Janine Duvitski, Andre Morell, Brian Glover, and Patrick Barr in smaller roles.I recommend this one very highly.Nine out of 10.

Before they can rob a safe on a train, thieves must obtain four independent keys kept by three people. The schemes devised to obtain the keys are laughably simplistic, with the plan to steal the final two keys (inexplicably kept in one place) ridiculously drawn out. Attempts at humor fall flat, and the film lacks the dramatic tension necessary for a good heist movie. Crichton not only adapts his own novel, but also directs. Based on the lame evidence presented here, he's not a competent writer or director. Connery and Sutherland are not called upon to flex their acting muscles while Down doesn't appear to have any such muscles. At least the sets and costumes are nice.

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.