Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Robert J. Maxwell This isn't the one with Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and the inimitable Leslie-Anne Down. It's the story of a gang of thieves who robbed a train in the early 1960s and made of with about 2.3 million pounds, worth about 11 million in today's money. It was made for television by the Brits, who do this sort of thing very well, while nobody in the US bothers to try -- with the possible exception of HBO.I won't go into detail about the plot. When it comes to stopping a train, moving it again, uncoupling cars, and changing green lights to amber, the dozen or so gang members are a lot of nudniks. During a practice run, and having read a child's book on driving a train, they manage to start the locomotive and actually get it moving forward. But they don't know how to slow it down, let alone stop it, and they bail out while the mammoth diesel sails off into the night.It gets more serious and far more tense later, when they execute the elaborate plan. Luke Evans, sporting a tremendous development of latissimus dorsi, struts around giving orders. It's a risky business, of course, but one million pounds is a lot of money. A few bungles here and there, and the Bobbies are closing in on them. They separate and begin to hightail it out of London. End of Part One. Part Two gives us the police side of things.If you like the musical score, buy two Miles Davis albums -- "Kind of Blue" and "Porgy and Bess."

GUENOT PHILIPPE I was born any a couple of months after the great train robbery, back in 1963. And I have always been fascinated by it. My dream would be to go on the actual place where it occurred, the Bridego Bridge. I possess nearly every document about it, footage archive and fiction material. The most memorable, of course, remains Peter Yates's ROBBERY, back in 1967, and the other movie starring the actor starring Derrick - sorry I don't remember his name. Some viewers said on IMDb that this feature was not flawless, concerning details specified to UK, for instances trains and cars from this very era. Well, I have never lived in UK, so...But concerning this film, the only thing that annoyed me was the BOAC company heist, at the beginning. These guys are supposed to be professional robbers with a criminal record as thick as a phone book, and they pull the heist without any gloves !!!! Because finger prints, see? Rubbish. For the rest, it is a terrific piece of work, and the character description is absolutely outstanding. I loved the very ending when Bruce Reynolds tells the hard boiled inspector from SY, who chased them in such a raging way all over the years, that he did not do this for money but for "camaraderie" as he actually said, using a french word meaning companionship, brotherhood among friends. An outstanding face to face between those two adversaries. An authentic masterpiece. But it could have shown the several escapes from jail of some of the great train robbers.

Paul Grant Firstly I will state that I enjoyed both parts of this and thought it was a good way of covering a story that has become somewhat of a folk legend. It didn't make heroes out of either the robbers or the cops, which makes a pleasant change. It did show the violence they used against driver Jack Mills and why Butler of the Yard hung doggedly on till he got his men. So after all that good stuff why do they still make silly errors that distract the viewer? One that really jarred with me (OK I'm a geeky engineer) was the UHF TV aerial on the farmhouse. UHF didn't start in UK till 1964/5. The frame less glass doors in the police station are also horribly out of era for 1963! The wrong series Land Rover (wing mounted lights came in 1969). The white Jaguar police car with a sunroof! And the railway scenes were very poor, wrong loco, wrong location, wrong track(s) (Did anyone else notice how the West Coast mainline was variously single and double track with no overhead electrification? And also with extremely sharp bends!) Obviously it had to be filmed on a preserved railway line, but it would have helped if they had used CGI and/or some scenic realism. That bridge location is an iconic 20th century image and to use a bridge that was so different is poor, perhaps the BBC should pay more attention to detail and less to senior execs!

nic-874-218324 I enjoyed this first episode although of course we all know the story. And an important part of the story is that it all happened in August of 1963. Now I was only 4 years old that year so cant quite remember what the summer of '63 was like but I would bet a large amount of money (maybe even 2.1 million pounds)on a couple of things...first there were probably leaves on the trees and secondly it is doubtful that there was snow on the ground and indeed falling in London...in the middle of August!!! What were the producers thinking? During the episode there are several captions giving the date...including the 8th August 1963. Why or why did they create a setting that looked like January or February! There wasn't even any attempt to produce a blue sky! A good film, well acted and written but ruined by the weather! Only in England!!!