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The Great Train Robbery By Jeff Shannon
Best-selling novelist Michael Crichton had already directed Westworld
and Coma when he tackled the ambitious production of The Great
Train Robbery in 1978. Adapting his own novel (which was inspired by
the facts of the first known train robbery), Crichton sets this
attractive, highly enjoyable film in London in 1855, where Edward Pierce
(Sean Connery) and Agar (Donald Sutherland) plot to steal £25,000 in gold
that is being transported by train to pay British troops in the Crimean
War. Lesley-Anne Down plays Miriam, Pierce's sophisticated paramour and
the third partner in the scheme; while Pierce and Agar make copies of four
keys for the train's closely guarded safes, she uses her feminine wiles to
distract a variety of officials and businessmen with connections to the
gold.
A lively, humorous caper film of the first order, The Great Train
Robbery also boasts a vividly authentic recreation of mid-Victorian
England, all the more remarkable since the production was filmed primarily
in Ireland on a budget of $6 million--a miraculously modest sum (even in
1978) for such a lavish-looking film. Although Crichton's directorial
style seems somewhat detached and bloodless, he maintains a vivid respect
for place and time, and his three leads are splendid in their charismatic
roles. Meticulous attention to details of costuming and production design
enhance the breezy fun of the heist, which climaxes with an exciting
sequence on the rushing train, with Connery performing his own stunt work.
While the later hit Mission: Impossible would take a similar
sequence to its high-tech, high-velocity extreme, The Great Train
Robbbery remains an entertaining study of crime in a less hectic age,
allowing Crichton to emphasize ingenuity over special effects.
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