Hold-Up

$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.

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.

Being primarily a visual medium, one of the things film does best is illustrate the mechanics of complex items. I refer not only to the machinations of the caper plot so well achieved here, but also to big machines themselves -- trains, trucks, assembly lines. Many a great director has used the relentless workings of machines as a metaphor for inescapable fate -- think especially of Fritz Lang and the openings of Human Desire and Clash by Night.

The stars of Plunder Road are the machines themselves -- the overburdened trucks inching their way to freedom, the massive crane and huffing sabotaged train in the rain-pelted robbery scene, the bubbling cauldron at the foundry contributing to the ingenious escape plan, etc. The human characters are sketched briefly, with impressionistic strokes, but it's the mute mechanical accomplices that drive the plot and stick in the mind. This is best illustrated by the cleverly-inserted visit of a smog inspector, and again in the cruelly ironic downfall of the protagonists, who are at the mercy of their guileless vehicles.

That 10-minute opening is a real grabber. I'm still wondering whether the driving rain was real or not. If so, it must have made filming difficult as heck. The problem with an opening like this is once you've hit the highlight how do you fill the remainder, which could easily pale in comparison.

Still, it's no problem for this little gem. The remaining time amounts to a real nail-biter in getting away with the gold now that the gang has stolen it. Driving big rigs cross-country is cat-and-mouse with the cops the whole way, as details of the plan unfold, and we get acquainted with the gang members.

Raymond's effective as the disciplined mastermind. I think I counted one smile from him the whole time. Then there's the familiar mug of professional loser Cook Jr. who gets a regular guy role for once. And, of course, there's the underrated Wayne Morris as the dependable Commando, just two years away from an untimely passing.

My one gripe is with the tip-offs to the cops. They're flimsy and contrived, especially the police radio in Roly's (Repp) case. Too bad, because the rest of a tight script manages a surprisingly high degree of believability, thanks to screenwriter Steven Ritch who doubles here as race car guy Frankie.

I expect director Cornfield was hoping for a break-through film on the order of the previous year's The Killing (1956), which thrust Stanley Kubrick into the front rank. He doesn't get it, but he does get one heckuva good little heist film, and so do we. And, oh yes, I could have told the gang to stay off the LA freeways at rush hour.

Certainly a lot of atmosphere from the 1950s on display here, and we are on the road plenty. One is definitely drawn into the program, and it is difficult not to be interested in the details of all that is passing by before our eyes on the screen. The expressive faces, which are so strongly captured by the camera, may seem uncomfortably close at times, especially since they aren't faces of what we may call appealing folks. Keep in mind that with no counter-balance from hero figures, it may be easy to fall into rooting for some of these bad guys. A grim, stark, and memorable viewing experience.