The Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery

Directed by Michael Crichton.  Written by Michael Crichton.  Stars Sean Connery, Lesley-Anne-Down, Donald Sutherland,   
1978, 110 minutes, Color, Rated PG. 

Michael Crichton had an interesting film career in the 1970's. His first job as director was the television movie PURSUIT (1972) which was based on his novel Binary (published under his 'John Lange' pen name).  PURSUIT is a perfectly fine little film but doesn't really point to any great talent. His first big-screen film was WESTWORLD (1973) based on his original screenplay, and was a corker of an idea executed far better than the meager budget allocated to it would have predicted.  Blessed with an above-average cast (especially the stunt casting of Yul Brynner as a robot), WESTWORLD shows some real flair for film storytelling.  Crichton moved on to other things after WESTWORLD, namely writing The Great Train Robbery (1975) and Eaters of the Dead (1976), but swung back to filmmaking when he accepted the directing and screenwriting chores for COMA (1978), which was based on the novel by Robin Cook. COMA is quite effective and fits in nicely within his oeuvre, even though it was not his original idea.  Along with PRIMARY EVIDENCE (1989), ROBBERY stands apart from Crichton's other films by not having any science fiction element to it. 

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1978) is an old-fashioned adventure tale based on fact and blessed with sparkling performances by Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down. The film is set in London of 1853 and does a good job of depicting this thanks to the opulent cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth.  The bulk of the running time taken up with Connery's plan to plan and execute the world's first robbery on a moving train.   The robbery itself occurs over that last twenty-some minutes.  The plan involves copying four keys so that they can open safes on the train that contain gold bullion while it is moving.  In 1855, no one had ever successfully robbed a train in motion so it was a big deal at the time.  

Sean Connery plays Edward Pierce, mastermind of the plan.  The films shows the steps that led up to the robbery and the robbery itself.  The film compresses and slightly rearranges the events but remains faithful to the source novel  Those involved in the robbery were caught in 1857 and put on trial, but Pierce escaped and presumably lived out his life in luxury, as the money was never recovered.  As all of the pertinent facts for the story come from the trial transcripts, if they had not been caught we would have no real way of knowing how it had been done.  

Crichton states in the novel that he took all dialog from the trial.  The lends an aura of authenticity to the book, but also ultimately becomes its biggest problem in that almost nothing is known about Edward Pierce with certainty.  Given the lack of confirmable information that is available, it is not even entirely clear that this was his real name.  Therefore everything we know about him comes from what others said about him, and we know he lied to them.  Crichton largely overcomes this issue in the novel by layering in much detail of the time that the story is set.  It's a great read and very entertaining.  The film cannot spend so much time on the context of the events, but between Connery's charisma and the excellent production design the film moves along in a way that you aren't really aware of the lack of true understanding of Pierce.

Other changes from the novel and film:

• Two people are combined into the character that Sutherland plays.  He is a pickpocket and "screwsman" (someone who makes copies of keys) in the film, in the novel he is just the screwsman with another person being the pickpocket.  
• One of the keys has to be obtained from Mr. Henry Fowler, who in the film is a lecherous bank executive who carries one of the four keys needed to open the safes that contain the gold.  Pierce is able to copy the key by setting him up with a prostitute (played by his accomplice Lesley-Anne Down).  There is subterfuge involved and Down's character does not have to actually do anything with the man.  In the novel he is still lecherous, but suffering from the effects of a venerial disease.  Pierce sets him up with a prostitute who is a virgin (and frightfully young) and is able to copy the key while they are engaged in their activities.
• In the film, Pierce is caught at the station directly after the robbery.  He is put on trial and convicted but escapes as he is being led from the courthouse with the help of Down's and Sutherland's character.  In the novel everyone gets away.  However, two years later Sutherland's character is brought in by the police after a woman he knows tells them that he had a part in the gold robbery.  He eventually gives up Pierce and this is how everyone is caught.  Pierce still escapes, but Sutherland's character ends up in jail.

Just when things start to drag a bit too obviously--somewhere around the act of copying the fourth key--the film finally gets to the robbery itself.  Up until this point, the film was lightweight, agreeable and mostly fun, but the train sequence elevates the film and is far and away the most impressive thing that Crichton ever filmed.  Connery was just shy of 50 when he made this film, which makes his doing all of his own stunts on the train impressive.  The film shows him climbing onto the top of the moving train with no safety harness, and it's astonishing.  When Connery is almost taken out by low bridges several times it truly appears as though he was in real danger.  In his book Travels, Crichton explains that these scenes were carefully planned out which makes the execution all the more impressive, at least from a cinematic standpoint.

This is not to say that Connery was not in real danger at times.  Crichton also relates in Travels how the train was supposed to stay at 35 miles per hour, but as it was a period train there was no speedometer.  The enginemen estimated the speed the best they could by counting how many telephone poles they passed in a minute.  Later, the helicopter crew confirmed that for at least one of the sequences the train was in fact going closer to 55 miles per hour.  This gives the film an element of danger that it probably doesn't deserve.  Still, an agreeable film that has always been a personal favorite.

I watched it this time on the Kino Lorber Blu-Ray.  It's an older transfer but looks decent enough.  The disc includes the audio commentary by Crichton that was originally on the MGM/UA laser disc.  Crichton is an intelligent speaker and it's a great commentary.