Word: brink
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...film loosely follows the actual robbery which took place in Boston's North End back in 1950. That one was concocted by 11 men, seven of whom slipped into the Brink's warehouse one evening wearing pea-coats and Halloween masks and made off with the loot. At the time, the Brink's gang wasn't looked on as a bunch of affable fellows who just happened to stumble onto the crime of the century. In fact, a lot of people were convinced that the gang had wide underworld connections. Even six years after the robbery, when the case finally...
...course, such details are not the things that pass into legends--or even movies. Predictably enough, The Brink's Job is nothing but distilled cuteness. It ignores all of the unphotogenic aspects of the gang, and focuses on its incompetence, its sleazy-but-sweet background, and its delight in hoodwinking the country...
This glossing over isn't really a bad thing. The Brink's legend has entertained people for more than 20 years now, and there's no reason to try to do anything more than that with the movie. Friedkin was not even a bad choice for the man to do it. Although he has a reputation from The Exorcist and The French Connection as a calculating director who stops at nothing to wrench an audience's guts, he also has done this sort of nostalgic tribute before. The Night They Raided Minsky's was a rollicking adventure about vaudeville...
...blame must be with Friedkin, since the cast couldn't be better. The Brink's gang is played by a bunch of lovable actors who delight in the roles of these bumbling underdogs. Heading the group is Peter Falk as the mastermind--if you can call him that--of this near-perfect heist. His criminal genius is somewhat in doubt, since the movie opens with one of his novice efforts, the burglary of a sausage factory. After much tool-dropping and other displays of incompetence, the job ends with Falk hiding in a room full of chickens, only...
None of this helps the film much. The slow pace leaves the Brink's gang looking like the Three Stooges on quaaludes. Falk and his cohorts Paul Sorvino, Allen Goorwitz and Peter Boyle (whose intermittent Irish accent has to be heard to be believed), all ham up their little peculiarities, but things never quite start rolling. The pace starts to pick up midway through the film, when Warren Oates appears as a half-crazed demolition expert whose plans to blow up the Brink's safe with a bazooka stun the rest of the gang into disbelief...