Excellent and very much of its time

andeven

Great film. One I'd take to the desert island. It's not only entertaining, it also provides a fascinating glimpse of its era.

However I do have a few niggles, some of which constitute definite spoilers so if you haven't seen the film and don't wish to note them, please read no further.

At the lunch early in the film Hyde accuses all the assembled Gentlemen of being crooks "of one sort or another". While most of them had certainly been up to no good during their time in the army and been punished accordingly the word "crooks" is hardly appropriate in their later civilian lives. Mycroft certainly and possibly Race and Lexy but Weaver and Porthill seem to be more or less blameless, if in the latter case a bit disreputable, and Rutland-Smith's only crime anywhere seems to have been to have run up some "embarrassing mess bills". Stevens' implied indulgence in homosexual acts, while illegal at the time the film was made, would hardly justify his being labelled a crook even then. I feel that some more convincing criminality could have been devised - perhaps beating up Hyde en masse after he had gone round the table insulting each in turn!

To my mind the only real weakness in the film is the way they were caught. There are two reasons for this, one regarding plot and the other structure. Firstly, if I am correct, they were rumbled because the policeman who visited their warehouse recorded, for some unexplained reason, the number of Hyde's car, which the latter later used in the robbery. Its number was then noted by the small boy near the crime scene. Would such a meticulous planner as Hyde really have committed such a faux pas? The stolen car, after all, had its number changed so why not his? Or, preferably, would it not have been better - indeed obvious - not to have used his car at all? Secondly the sudden appearance of the boy, taking car numbers, jarred.It clearly had some relevance, otherwise there was no need to include it, and it indicated fairly clearly that it would somehow lead to the plan's ultimate failure.

Something that has always worried me and which has doubtless occurred in real life (certainly in the GTR of 1963) but which the film does not address was the fact that the taking of huge numbers of used notes inevitably led to the group taking their share of the loot in that form. We were not told how much was eventually seized but on the basis of the estimated £million divided by eight it would be £125K each. Nowadays, depending on which inflation index one uses, that would need to be, say, around £2.5 million and would need rather more than one suitcase each (see my later comment on a remake) but even the 1960 amount of physical cash would have posed difficult logistical problems for the robbers. Where to store it in the meantime and then how to deal with it, for instance. Even allowing for client confidentiality, banks and other financial institutions would, knowing that a huge robbery had taken place, be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at sudden appearances of large sums in previously threadbare or non-existent accounts. Few would mind the problem but it would need to be solved.

Others have criticised the film for not allowing the crime to succeed though most accept that the moral climate at the time would not have permitted it. I think that that is true but I also think that it was not the only reason. If the film had stopped at the post-heist party with "Oh well, thanks for everything, gentlemen, enjoy the money" THE END, it would hardly have met the need for a strong ending. Really they had to be caught if only for dramatic effect.

Finally, I can accept Colonel Hyde grubbing around in the sewers surrounding the bank (sadly, that manhole cover has gone now) in order to check on the subterranean situation but would he really have done so in evening dress and with his Rolls parked over the road advertising his presence? Oh, wait, though. He was very careless with his car numbers, wasn't he? Finally finally! I note the tediously inevitable call for a remake. For heaven's sake why? TLOG ain't perfect but what film is? PLEASE think of that ghastly remake of The Ladykillers and leave well alone.

score 9/10

andeven 25 March 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2586444/