BRINKS: THE GREAT ROBBERY

US, 1979, 96 minutes, Colour.
Carl Betz, Darren Mc Gavin, Cliff Gorman, Michael Gazzo, Stephen Collins, Leslie Nielsen.
Directed by Marvin Chomsky.

Brinks: The Great Robbery is an interesting, rather than entertaining, telemovie. It was directed by Marvin Chomsky, director of many miniseries including Roots, telemovies like Victory at Entebbe and movies like Tank. The film has an interesting cast ranging from Darren Mc Gavin and Cliff Gorman as the masterminds of the Brinks robbery with Michael Gazzo as a Mafia criminal and Stephen Collins (later to become more famous in films and television) as a member of the F.B.I. squad investigating the crime.

The Brinks robbery was considered the crime of the century. It consisted of a hold-up of the Boston Brinks Company in 1950. The film re-stages the planning of the robbery, its execution and the subsequent history of the main protagonists. They resisted the investigation of the F.B.I. for several years, some enjoying the fruits of the robbery, others collapsing physically and mentally. The F.B.I. persevered, eventually getting people to testify against one another and the crime was solved.

The strength of the film is in the quick character-sketching, the highlighting of motives for such ordinary men to rob Brinks. The details of the execution of the crime are of interest.

In 1978 there was a cinema version of the robbery with an all star cast led by Peter Falk and Paul Sorvino. Direction of this film, The Brinks Job, was by Oscar-winner William Friedkin, director of such films as The French Connection and The Exorcist. This telemovie remains a more sober and straightforward account of the robbery.