Rapina al treno postale

Best known as the little obscure crime film that gave English director Peter Yates his big game-changing opportunity to make BULLITT stateside, after Steve McQueen had witnessed the rudimentary car chase sequence from ROBBERY, an extremely sparse, deliberately uncaring British Neo Noir Heist-Thriller...

And it's not just the chase that Yates carried over to the McQueen classic but the meticulous and metronomic moments leading up to it...

Starring the always tough/ultra square-jawed Stanley Baker but only because he's in charge, ROBBERY makes pretty much equal use of the male leads...

Including James Booth as the trailing cop, William Marlowe as Baker's strong-silent second, Barry Forster as his strong-silent third while Frank Finlay, as a meek/geek though crooked banker too-easily broken out of prison, is the most vulnerable and sympathetic...

Yet there's very little sympathy for these particular devils, whose only flaw is how long and tediously methodical it takes for the actual train heist (inspired by The Great Train Robbery) to go down... the director not always considering an audience but, like real life crimes - and even the McQueen ultra-realistic police-procedure about the other side of the law - Yates showcases the slowburn reality like being right there, for better or worse since it's not always extremely exciting, and that's the point...

Just don't let the casting of beautiful poster-perfect Joanne Pettit fool you. ROBBERY cares neither about romance or the human condition.

Robbery is directed by Peter Yates and adapted to screenplay by Yates, Edward Boyd and George Markstein from The Robber's Tale written by Peta Fordham. It stars Stanley Baker, James Booth, Frank Finlay, Joanna Pettet, Barry Foster, William Marlowe, George Sewell and Clinton Greyn. Music is by Johnny Keating and cinematography by Douglas Slocombe.

As tough as steel toe capped docker boots, Robbery is a fictionalised take on the Great Train Robbery of 1963 that saw the London to Glasgow mail train stripped of its £2.6 million hold. It was a robbery seen as daring and near genius in its meticulous planning and execution. Coming out just four years after the real event, Peter Yates' film takes the skeleton facts of the real robbery and builds a dramatic carcass around it.

Film is structured in three stages, firstly is a scintillating diamond robbery that introduces us to some of the major players in the train robbery to follow. This is fronted by an adrenalin pumping car chase that stands as one of the finest ever put to celluloid, kinetic and with inventive use of camera work, it's set to almost no dialogue and is car choreography of the highest order. Steve McQueen was so impressed he promptly arranged to have Yates summoned to Hollywood to direct Bullit.

The second part of the picture and the meaty middle section of the tale, concentrates on the movers and shakers in the robbery. The planning of the event, the gathering of various criminal London factions, their meetings, arguments, frets and worries, even a scenario that sees ringleader Paul Clifton (Baker) arrange to have a currency expert broken out of prison. All the time while this is happening, as the various crooks move about various London locations such as bars, clubs, football grounds and abodes etc, we are also following the police side of things. The kicker here is that the police, led by Inspector George Langdon (Booth), know that something big is being planned, and by who, but they don't know what and have to bite their nails waiting for a break or for the event to actually happen!

Finally the third part is the robbery itself and the aftermath involving the robbers hiding out, scattering to the wind as the cops close in. The robbery is edge of the seat brilliance, cunning in its execution and filmed with such gritty realism it really grabs the attention wholesale. The climax played out at a disused airfield is also exciting and such is the fact that previously we have been firmly tuned into the main characters on both sides of the law, we are fully immersed into what will become of them all.

Yates and his cast are on fine form, with Baker and Booth excellent, in fact the film positively bristles with British beef at times! Slocombe's photography strips it back to basics, suitably so to imbue that documentary feel, and Keating's score thunders away like a criminal accomplice at times. While fans of 60s London as a period backdrop can't fail to feel well fed after film's end. Pettet's wife of Clifton angle feels under nourished, and the whole middle section inevitably fails to sustain the tempo created by that exhilarating first quarter of film, but small irritants only they be. For Robbery is a British Bulldog of a movie, its biceps bulging, its brain clicking into gear, in short, it's a cracker! 8/10

An extended near-wordless sequence, punctuated by Johnny Keating's tension-building staccato music, follows a cleverly planned diamond heist. Followed by an exciting high-speed car chase through the streets of London, the opening scenes of Peter Yates "Robbery" illustrate cinematic story-telling at its best. Although following the diamond job, the film slows to a more sedate pace, nevertheless, director Yates keeps the focus on plot and detail with a minimum of filler. After the diamond robbery, Stanley Baker as Paul Clifton re-groups his men, and, with added members, they buy into another robbery, which he promises will be the big one and net three or four million pounds. The target is the Royal Mail Train on the eve of a three-day bank holiday. Clifton's planning is meticulous and includes springing Robinson, played by Frank Finlay, from prison with an all too easy diversion ploy. While Baker and his boys proceed, police inspector Langdon, played by James Booth, heads an investigation into the diamond heist, which hones in on Clifton and other members of Baker's group.

Cutting between the robbery plans, the inspector's work, and a brief peek at Clifton's domestic life, the film is an excellent thinly-veiled dramatization of the famous British great train robbery, which took place in 1963, four years before the film was made. The scenes of domestic crisis between Baker and Joanna Pettet as his wife are probably the film's weakest; Pettet has little to do, and her presence seems little more than a gratuitous female token. However, the screenplay by Edward Boyd, Peter Yates, and George Markstein is tight otherwise, and the shift between the plotters and the police adds suspense, although viewers may identify with the unarmed robbers and cheer them on. Peter Yates's direction is top notch, although he subsequently topped the opening car chase with a more famous one in "Bullit." Featuring good performances throughout from Baker, Booth, Finlay, and Barry Foster, "Robbery" is well directed, well shot by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, and provides excellent entertainment.

The terseness of the one-word title perfectly fits the low-keyed demeanour of this laconic heist movie that just a couple of years earlier would have been shot in black & white but now had to be in colour (but with results so pleasing to the eye I'm not complaining).

The initial car chase promptly brought Peter Yates to America to repeat the trick but seeing it staged in the narrow streets of London rather than in San Francisco in 'Bullitt' (which could have been built for the job) the results were thus ten times more harrowing; and the film that follows is far more coherent.

This is true British gangster filming at its best.

The opening robbery and car chase, from Hatton Garden around central London and out to Maida Vale, is utterly brilliant and that's years before the French Connection or anything like that. Peter Yates was brilliant. In fact, if they re-make any British gangster film these days it should be Robbery, not Get Carter or anything like that.

The music is utterly brilliant, too. Johny Keating should be up there with the likes of John Barry, John Williams, etc. He seems to have done virtually nothing after this film.

Even the faked scenes of the train robbery itself are great despite the London-Glasgow express train really being another train on a branch line travelling at about 30 mph.

They could've made a sequeal to this, too, with the legendary and fantastic Stanley Baker shown in the New World. Same goes for the late Barry Foster.