Word: ganges
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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 came to trial...
...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...
...weren't for the director's dead-weight, this movie could probably rollick to success. All the elements are there--from Falk's bumbling to Warren Oates's sensitive performance of the gang member who cracks and blows the whistle on the thieves just two weeks before the statute of limitations runs out. Even the post-war Boston setting is faithfully captured, right down to the graffiti on the subways. But the film never takes off. At the end the robbers are led, one by one, past cheering crowds outside the courtroom. It's staged curtain call...
...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...