The Brink’s Job *** (1978, Peter Falk, Warren Oates, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield, Gena Rowlands, Paul Sorvino) – Classic Movie Review 6,508

Director William Friedkin’s often exciting 1978 true crime heist movie The Brink’s Job is based on the real-life American ‘crime of the century’ in 1950 when nearly $3 million was snatched by amateurs in an armed robbery from the Brink’s company Building in Boston. Friedkin’s movie is workmanlike, appealing and enjoyable, with a great cast to make it special.

Peter Falk, Warren Oates, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield, Gena Rowlands and Paul Sorvino lead the cast of distinguished actors, who give cheery knockabout performances. They play it like it is a Seventies American update on a Fifties Ealing Studios comedy. That is risky, but it pays off. And it contrasts well with – and surprisingly works well with – Friedkin’s taut and tense direction with its sharp whiff of reality.

Walon Green’s screenplay is based on Noel Behn’s novel Big Stick-Up at Brink’s, the only work of his made into a movie apart from The Kremlin Letter (1970).

Also in the cast are Sheldon Leonard as J Edgar Hoover, Gerard Murphy, Kevin O’Connor, Claudia Peluso, Patrick Hines, Walter Klavun and Malachy McCourt.

It is shot in Technicolor by Norman Leigh, produced by Ralph Serpe, scored by Richard Rodney Bennett and designed by Dean Tavoularis.

There are three more movies about the Brink’s robbery: Six Bridges to Cross (1955), Blueprint for a Robbery (1961) and Brink’s: The Great Robbery (1976).

William Friedkin (August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) directed The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and for himself Best Director, and The Exorcist (1973), for which he was Oscar nominated as Best Director.

His other films include The Boys in the Band (1970), Sorcerer (1977), The Brink’s Job (1978), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Bug (2006) and Killer Joe (2011).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6,508

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