Movie review - "Robbery Under Arms" (1957) **

Ken G Hall wanted to make a film out of this novel for two decades, and although I've never read a script it surely must have been more entertaining than this lethargic version, with director Jack Lee obsessed with long shots and leaden pacing. Roland Lewis and David McCallum are very brylcream as the two brothers who go visit their dodgy dad and find themselves on a run with some stolen cattle and Captain Starlight (Peter Finch). They say goodbye after the run, meet two sisters - a trash gal (Maureen Swanson, very sexy) and a sweet one (Jill Ireland) - then eventually meet up with Starlight again, rob a coach, say goodbye to Starlight again, then meet up with him again on the Gold Fields (irritatingly coincidentally), join him again, then say goodbye again.

It sounds repetitive and feels like it. There's no real theme or story uniting it all - the boys are tempted to crime pretty easily and keep falling back into it (not that they commit much - a cattle drive and a robbery is about all). There's no interesting mystery or enigma to Starlight - he just sort of pops up and doesn't seem too sympathetic even if he doesn't kill anyone. 

 

All the cool things he does in the book (dance with a girl at a wedding despite being surrounded by enemies, play cards cooly under pressure, honouring an agreement with the Knightleys) are cut out except for the bit where he impersonates a gent from England. There's no real relationship between him and the boys - indeed the only real character flair is their dad who bitterly whinges about him being transported to Australia for pinching a rabbit. The mother goes tsk tsk, as does the sister, Swanson flairs up, Ireland and McCallum are dopey idiots... the character of the good neighbour, who is the Path Not Taken, is sketchily defined as everything else.

The script makes a number of bad decisions like killing off Lewis, then having a ten minute shoot out sequence with Starlight and their dad, who we've hardly followed, and his men, who we hardly know, then crossing back to McCallum. It cuts out exciting bits from the book, like the two homestead sieges, the horse race, the wedding , the rivalry with the evil Dan Moran, the race by Mrs Keighly.

There are some striking visual images (all those long shots), and having the final shoot out in long shot (again!) is at least different, even if it just serves to make us more emotionally distant from the characters. And the bank robbery sequence was quite suspenseful, with that little kid dragging his stick along the wall, and ended with surprising violence. 

 

A real dull mess.