The Great Train Robbery (1978)

The Great Train Robbery was written and directed by Michael Crichton, based on his own novel. It was shot in England and financed by Dino de Laurentiis. It’s a heist movie set in 1855.

Crichton had become obsessed with Victorian England and also with the question of the origins and nature of criminal underworlds. He had also come across a factual account of an attempted robbery which had been the first of its type and which was the inspiration for Crichton’s novel.

Crichton’s story concerns an attempt to rob a moving train - a feat considered at the time to be impossible. The target is a very large shipment of gold, gold which will be used to pay British troops fighting in the Crimean War.

The gold will be in a safe which requires four keys and the keys are in the custody of three  separate bank and railway officials. The first essential step is to steal those keys.

An apparently respectable but actually very shady businessman named Pierce (Sean Connery) believes the gold could be stolen and he intends to steal it. 

His chief accomplice is Agar (Donald Sutherland), a brilliant pickpocket and lock specialist.

And he has his girlfriend Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) whose very considerable powers of seduction will be very useful.

As in most heist stories there’s a long lead-up to the robbery but that’s no problem here because the gang has to carry out a whole of series of impossibly difficult and daring preliminary crimes.

And the heist itself is immense fun.

Crichton was famous for his techno-thrillers but what makes The Great Train Robbery so interesting is that he approaches it the same way - meticulous research and an amazing ability to make painstaking attention to detail of absorbing interest.

And with his keen interest in Victorian criminality Crichton would have been aware of the challenges facing the police. In the days before central databases and fingerprinting establishing a criminal’s identity could be tricky. Forensic science did not exist. And without international telegraphy if a criminal could get out of England he could disappear very easily and very completely. The police of course had informants but they more or less had to catch criminals in the act. So if Pierce and his gang can penetrate the security surrounding the gold shipment and get hold of the gold they might then be very hard to track down.

Connery oozes charisma and plays his part with a twinkle in his eye which is absolutely the right approach. And lighthearted adventure was something Donald Sutherland did extremely well. Connery and Sutherland make a delightful pair of rogues. And Lesley-Anne Down makes a fine Sexy Lady Rogue.

While the aim was always to get a PG-13 rating what I do like is that Crichton gives the film a delightful feel of Victorian bawdiness. There’s some extraordinarily risque dialogue  laced with delicious double-entendres. The brothel scene and Miriam’s seduction scene are naughty in a very Victorian way. It’s also obvious that Miriam is an ex-whore but this is suggested rather than stated.

The movie was well received by critics with the one criticism being the pacing but listening to Crichton’s audio commentary it’s clear that this was deliberate - he wanted that more leisurely Victorian pacing rather than 1970s pacing. And he was right. 

And it’s never boring. There’s fine suspense and the action sequences are superb. The budget was tight but it looks great and the period details are a joy. It has a fine old-fashioned rollicking adventure yarn feel.

The Great Train Robbery is immense amounts of fun. Highly recommended.

The main extra is an excellent audio commentary recorded by Michael Crichton in 1996.