Save your money for something good and enjoyable

From my favorite movies..

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

British Peter Yates drove race cars before becoming a director and turning out some pedestrian work and a couple of respectable films, including this one and "Bullitt." Steve McQueen, another racing aficionado, having seen the spectacular car chase through the streets of London in this film, invited Yates to direct him in "Bullitt" the following year, and there is a certain concordance between the two. "Bullitt" (1968) is superior. The interrelationships are more subtle, the musical score more apt. The score in "Robbery" shrieks "generic thriller" and lacks anything like the sophistication of the flute trio in San Francisco's chic Coffee Cantata. And if the car chase in "Robbery" is thrilling -- and it is -- the high speed pursuit in "Bullitt" provides a touchstone for all the car chases that followed, from "The Seven Ups" to "The French Connection." There was never anything like it before.Basically, "Robbery" has Stanley Baker in charge of one of those gangs consisting of specialists, one expert in electronics, another in laundering, another who knows how to be a locomotive engineer, and so forth. The heist of more than three million pounds from the Royal Mail train is tense, engaging, and a little confusing. The confusion is compensated for by the many times we see references to "Royal Mail," which sounds infinitely better than "U. S. Postal Service." "Royal Mail." It doth roll trippingly from the tongue.No guns are displayed or used, in contrast to "Bullitt", and even in the later film there are only two brief scenes involving gunplay. The fact is that guns aren't always necessary in robberies like the one described here. Imagine, two freaky looking dudes wearing black ski masks and threatening you with crowbars tell you to drive a locomotive at 20 miles per hour, and you're a balding, near-sighted, middle-aged man. Are you going to drive that locomotive at the speed requested? You bet you are. "No guns," orders Stanley Baker. "They don't use them so we won't either." On the other hand, "Bullitt" was made in America for an American audience and the final shot is of a .38 caliber police revolver in its holster, wrapped in its shoulder harness, lying on the bathroom sink, all coiled up like a rattlesnake."Robbery" is a caper movie. The police are always just one step behind the gang. The gang's hideout is at a now deserted and dilapidated base called RAF Gravesley, a bomber base that once accommodated Halifaxes and Mosquitoes. It's an eerie feeling to be in a once-populated and now empty community.I had that experience at Fort Hancock, established during the Revolutionary War to guard New York harbor from the British. It was closed during the Cold War and all its personnel departed except for a handful of Coast Guardsmen, with whom I stayed for a summer. All the empty buildings were unlocked. The hospital staff had left its microscope slides carefully packed in drawers. There was the occasional pile of 20 mm. rounds, still intact. I had a similar feeling watching the scenes shot at RAF Gravesley. It was like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone.Overall, nice job, and an entry for Peter Yates into the Big Money of Hollywood.

This movie is well made, with a typical trade mark approach by the crime picture craftsman Peter Yates was. There's no big bang, no unnecessary violence, just the pace that tells the story. This method Yates used successfully in his Hollywood years building up a plot without too much distraction from standard story fillers, which produced great films such as "Bullitt" and "The Friends of Eddie Coyle". In this one Yates gives the audience just enough to paint a picture of a big time robbery, with minimal character development but enough to serve the purpose. A must see for the fans of this classic director, not great but rather good crime movie that they don't make any more.

Although Robbery belongs to one of my favourite British film genres, i.e. that of the sordid, sleazy gangster movie, I can't really like it. Compared to pictures such as The Good Die Young (1954), Villain (1971), The Long Good Friday (1980), Get Carter! (1971) and The Frightened City (1961), it lacks any psychological interest, and has no characters in whom one can invest even the slightest sympathy.Another thing that doesn't help is that the leading man is the snake-eyed Stanley Baker, whose talents didn't include charm or likability. But perhaps the nastiest thing about Robbery is that it's based upon the so-called "Great" British Train Robbery of 1963, in which the train driver was very badly beaten up, which may well have contributed to his premature death a few years later. The film gives his fictional character no sympathy at all.Moral considerations apart, Robbery is also shot in the ugliest, flattest colour I've ever seen in a modern-era film, and it feels like the longest 110-minute film ever made. I give it 6/10 for historical interest only.

A very well made near-reconstruction of the Great Train Robbery, taut, brilliantly directed and acted, with excellent casting.Stanley Baker was on top form for this film-such a tragedy that he died so young-and so are the rest of the cast, which includes many 1960s British film stalwarts, such as Glynn Edwards and Barry Foster.It should be remembered that many of the details of the preparations by the "firms" who carried out the real GTR, only came out in later books, so the very realistic pre-the big robbery story lines in this film were, it turned out, not surprisingly, very accurate: the robbery to finance the big job, the pulling together of a team of top criminals etc.In all not one to be missed, whenever it is shown on TV.