#35, 3/30 – The Great Train Robbery (1979) (vod)
A late 70s heist movie starring Sean Connery, Lesley-Anne Down and Donald Sutherland? Even my disdain for Michael Crichton couldn’t overcome the general likability of such a film. And it was likable, especially because of the faux-Victorian silliness of the whole thing. I think it’s fair to say that the stars all mailed their performances in (at least it seemed that way to me), but with the right setup a charismatic set of actors can mug their way through an entire film without it being a problem.
And a heist film is about as perfect a setup as you can get. As I’ve said before, I love heist films for their inevitability (unsurprisingly, I’m thinking of seeing what may be another entry in the genre on Saturday). They’re so easy to get right. It’s all just details. The writer and director model for us exactly how the job would work in an ideal situation. The more clever the job, the more better. But then, of course, real life throws in (here’s that word again) inevitable complications which make executing the job (or getting away with it) even more difficult than initially planned. It’s just so much fun.