Os Salteadores de Estradas

A well planned and executed train robbery is carried out in silence in twelve minutes. The take is over ten million dollars in gold. Now the six thieves -- Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook, Jr, Stafford Repp and Steven Rich -- have to get it past the roadblocks from border to border.

It's a decently done B movie, with some nice talent in front of the camera and behind it, too; Ernest Haller runs a nice camera, with an increasingly filled and claustrophobic screen. A little too much time is spent in chat, but what are you going to do when you're driving a truck several thousand miles, and the voice on the radio is always the same?

Once again, I am impressed by Gene Raymond, whom I had once written off as a pretty-boy actor from the 1930s. This was Wayne Morris' last movie shoot; one he had shot earlier sat on the shelves for a few years.

Plunder Road is an object lesson in what can be done with a low-budget and a stripped-down script. The opening moments, at night under a hard rain, are disorienting, swift, and all but silent. A gang of highwaymen has plotted to rob a train of its gold-bullion cargo. Successful, its members split off onto three separate routes to what they hope will be prosperous freedom. The movie follows them dispassionately as they individually reckon with their fates. This is a marvel of action and economy -- one of the most enjoyable offerings from late in the cycle of film noir.

The most prestigious B crime flick about heists, besides GUNS GIRLS AND GANGSTERS, both of the same period, late fifties, both short, sharp as a knife, with no useless shot, rough, tough gangsters stories, gritty, dark, as I LOVE, for which I would walk through a mine field. What I would not do for today's OCEAN'S ELEVEN like crap, bullsh....material. I regularely watch those films every two or three years, I don't get tired of it. Wayne Morris and Gene Raymond have never been better for my own taste. And Elisha Cook Jr - the ancestor for me of Geoffrey Lewis, I don't know why, - is also terrific, despite a supporting character. No one can get tired of it.

This is another of those "Poverty Row" film noirs, a crime movie made on a low budget but yet decently acted and certainly entertaining.

Gene Raymond and Elisha Cook Jr. are known actors to classic film buffs but the rest of the cast may not be too familiar. There is no one star in this film anyway but all give good performances, particularly Raymond, the most interesting member of the gang.

The weak link of the film, at least to me, was the ending...but I give it points for originality. Overall, the story was a simple one, but oddly told. I say that because the important things that happened in the film (the arrests of the criminals, for one thing) would be glossed over quickly while minor things would be detailed longer than necessary. Despite that, the film was interesting thanks to good dialog, realism on the part of the characters and the short running time (73 minutes). Hope to see it on DVD some day.

$10 million in gold is being shipped by rail to San Francisco from Salt Lake City. Five men are determined to see that the gold doesn't make it. The men successfully pull-off a daring nighttime robbery and snatch the $10 million. Their plan includes loading the gold into three different trucks. At regular intervals, they set off for the coast where they intend to rendezvous and split their loot. Will they make it? (This is a film noir - you know things are bound to go horribly wrong.)

Plunder Road is a nice little low-budget noir/crime/drama film. While I enjoyed every second of the movie, the highlight for me has to be the robbery that takes up at least the first 15 minutes of the film's 72 minute runtime. Similar to Rififi, the robbery is carried out almost entirely in silence. The plan is well thought out and executed. The coordination between the five guys makes for a great watch. Director Hubert Cornfield expertly filmed this section of the movie. He wisely included almost every detail - from the masks to the gassing of the guards to the handling of the explosives. Some of the camera angles Cornfield chose helped to increase the excitement of the whole thing. I also think that filming the heist in pouring rain was a wise decision. The rain added even more suspense and atmosphere. While I'm not overly familiar with most of the cast (Elisha Cook, Jr, being the exception), they all give nice performances. I think I was most impressed with Stafford Repp as Roly Adams, but that may only be because he's familiar to me having played Chief O'Hara on Batman in the 60s. Plunder Road's ending is appropriately bleak. As with most good film noir, none of the characters comes out unscathed.