The Great Train Robbery

All aboard for runaway action and suspense in this riveting masterpiece from writer/director Michael Crichton! Starring Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley Anne-Down, it's a "spine-tingling and suavely performed" adventure (The Hollywood Reporter) based on history's first train robbery. Filmed by Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning* cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, this "ingenious" (Variety) and "wonderful" (Gene Shalit) crime caper delivers mile-a-minute thrills and breathtaking excitement. Connery is Edward Pierce, a master thief who conceives a brilliant plan to steal a fortune in gold bars from a railroad payroll car. But to pull off the most daring heist in history, Pierce must join forces with a safecracker (Sutherland) and his own beautiful girlfriend (Down) in a series of intricately plotted thefts that will test all of their nerve, camaraderie and larcenous skill. *1972: Cabaret; 1980: Tess

Best-selling novelist Michael Crichton had already directed Westworld and Coma when he tackled the ambitious production of The Great Train Robbery in 1978. Adapting his own novel (which was inspired by the facts of the first known train robbery), Crichton sets this attractive, highly enjoyable film in London in 1855, where Edward Pierce (Sean Connery) and Agar (Donald Sutherland) plot to steal £25,000 in gold that is being transported by train to pay British troops in the Crimean War. Lesley-Anne Down plays Miriam, Pierce's sophisticated paramour and the third partner in the scheme; while Pierce and Agar make copies of four keys for the train's closely guarded safes, she uses her feminine wiles to distract a variety of officials and businessmen with connections to the gold.

A lively, humorous caper film of the first order, The Great Train Robbery also boasts a vividly authentic recreation of mid-Victorian England, all the more remarkable since the production was filmed primarily in Ireland on a budget of $6 million--a miraculously modest sum (even in 1978) for such a lavish-looking film. Although Crichton's directorial style seems somewhat detached and bloodless, he maintains a vivid respect for place and time, and his three leads are splendid in their charismatic roles. Meticulous attention to details of costuming and production design enhance the breezy fun of the heist, which climaxes with an exciting sequence on the rushing train, with Connery performing his own stunt work. While the later hit Mission: Impossible would take a similar sequence to its high-tech, high-velocity extreme, The Great Train Robbbery remains an entertaining study of crime in a less hectic age, allowing Crichton to emphasize ingenuity over special effects. --Jeff Shannon