Rent Armored Car Robbery (1950)
3.6 of 5 from 55 ratings
1h 5min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Dave Purvis (William Talman) is the smartest crook there is and he's got a red-hot scheme to secure his retirement: rob an armoured car full of money, then fly off to the sun. But Dave's not as lucky as he needs to be: a cop car swings past, guns are fired and a policeman dies. The dead man's friend Lt. Jim Cordell (Charles McGraw) vows pursuit: he's smart and tough and gets results. As the heat starts to rise, paranoia kicks in and the gang turns on each other. Can Dave escape before Cordell runs him to ground?
- Actors:
- Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman, Douglas Fowley, Steve Brodie, Don McGuire, Don Haggerty, James Flavin, Gene Evans, Barry Brooks, Paul Bryar, Paul E. Burns, James Bush, Roger Creed, Dick Dickinson, Art Dupuis, Charles Flynn, Fred Howard, Richard Irving, Linda Leighton
- Directors:
- Richard Fleischer
- Producers:
- Herman Schlom
- Writers:
- Earl Felton, Gerald Drayson Adams, Robert Angus, Robert Leeds
- Aka:
- Armoured Car Robbery
- Studio:
- Odeon Entertainment
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- Heist Movies: A 20-Year Stretch, A Brief History of Film...
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Reviews (2) of Armored Car Robbery
Of Hoods and Trunks - Armored Car Robbery review by CH
Armored Car Robbery (1950) appears to concern exactly that. As in any heist, what counts is not so much the haul as the aftermath. A small fortune has been taken from a Los Angeles racetrack as part of a meticulously-plotted raid but, for all the work being done amidst gas, something goes wrong. The gang is spotted, chase is given, bullets ring out, two of them hitting flesh through windscreens.
Minutes into this, and time is already catching up with those who thought that money could bring a better life across the border. This was made by Richard Fleischer two years before his masterly Narrow Margin with which it shares pace and an eye for those hours between dusk and dawn when shadows conceal so much more.
Charles McGraw is a policeman out to avenge a colleague killed in the shoot-out and gets hard on the trail of gang leader William Talman who, of course, is smitten with a burlesque dancer (Adele Jergens) whose on-stage scenes are given added heat by her being already married to another member of the gang.
Filled with now-vanished curvaceous automobiles, any number of location scenes, and several moments at the game appears to be up. For all the dextrous performances, the start of this is the camera which, at every moment, brings a sense of the shades between the black and white of order and law - and there is a surprising reference in the dialogue to the young Norman Mailer. Watch a b-movie and you can be so much better rewarded than items first presented at red-carpet showings.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Fifties Noir. - Armored Car Robbery review by Steve
Tough heist-noir released a few weeks after The Asphalt Jungle. So it was present at the dawn of the genre. This is the low budget version; punchy, modest but compelling. It was shot on the streets of Los Angeles with just a suggestion of the realistic police procedural style which was abundant in this period.
It clocks in at just over an hour and there isn't any let up. The cast is an ensemble of lesser B-picture stalwarts promoted to leads. William Talman is the vicious gang leader who pulls together a handful of deadbeats to carry out the heist. Naturally, it all falls apart due to dumb bad luck and the boss' uncompromising brutality. And the production code...
Then the focus shifts to the investigation with Charles McGraw as the cop who seeks to avenge the death of his partner in the robbery. Richard Fleischer commits a surprising amount of the short running time to Adele Jergens' routine as a stripper in a burlesque theatre. Though we only ever see the start of the act.
She's more interesting offstage as an astonishingly pragmatic femme fatale. This is a programmer which was only intended to be half of a double bill. It survives because Fleischer is a fine genre director and the character roles fit his unstarry cast like an old raincoat. And because the conventions of noir and the heist film are so resilient.
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