Word: heist
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THERE'S SOMETHING MYTHICAL about the daring crook who manages to pull off the perfect heist. From England's great train robbers to the parachuting D.B. Cooper, these characters usually grab public attention for a few weeks on the front pages, and then pass quietly into the annals of folk-mythology...
...Boston's Brink's robbers. Far from being a gang of master criminals--as was first supposed--the thieves turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of petty, two-bit bumblers who hung out in Scolley Square, pulling off little jobs and dreaming of the big heist. It seemed poetic justice that these ordinary crooks were the ones to hit the prestigious armored-car company for a million and a half dollars. It was a daring robbery, no one got hurt, and the crooks very nearly got away with it. It's the stuff of legends...
...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 to be hauled...
...Brink's Job is a crime movie that has been conceived in the antic spirit of a burlesque show. Working from Writer Noel Behn's account of the celebrated 1950 Boston heist, Friedkin and Screenwriter Walon Green have created a series of loopy blackout sketches that celebrate the lunacy of some lucky penny-ante crooks. Not all of the bits are funny, but even the flat jokes have an engagingly whimsical air. From the evocative opening shot of strippers smoking on a theater fire escape to a late Borscht Belt cameo by Sheldon Leonard as J. Edgar Hoover...
...bank, meanwhile, has recovered about $2 million of its money and will probably sell the diamonds, valued on the retail market at $13 million. Result: the bank stands to make nearly a $5 million profit from the heist...