Monday, June 29, 2020

Movie review - "The Day they Robbed the Bank of England" (1960) ***

Decent heist film. Lacks a little zing and is maybe hampered by Aldo Ray in the lead. I like Ray normally but he seems out of place in England of 1900 or whenever this is set. Maybe he was particularly drunk.

It's a shame because the lead role is ideal for an American - an Irish American helping the IRA rob the bank of England. Its hooked up with politics - they're ordeed to stop at times because Home Rule might happen which is a great complication.

Keiron Moore booms as a fellow thief and Elizabeth Sellers is alright as the Girl but the film is mostly memorable for two support characters - Peter O'Toole, full of youth and life as the idiotic upper class twit who gives Ray all this inside information then begins to twig (easily the best role - I think O'Toole was offered Moore's part and figured out accurately that the other one was the one to nab) and Albert Sharpe was a drunken tunnel digger. This maybe needed less Ray and more of the support cast but the period detail gives it difference.

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