George Fowler, a bright kid planning to go to college, agrees to join a gang of crooks in order to rob a bank in St. Louis. His friend & fellow robber, Gino, is due to be sent to jail in three weeks time for an unrelated crime & plans to make this his last heist. He is also the brother of Ann, George's former girlfriend. They case the bank & make preparations to rob it. But Ann, who is emotionally unstable following her break-up with George, begins to suspect that her brother & former boyfriend are up to robbing banks & decides to secretly sabotage their efforts by writing a warning on the bank's window in lipstick. When the leader of the gang, the psychotic John Egan, finds out, he kills Ann & forces George to take a more direct role in the robbery. But the heist ends up a spectacular failure.
This crime thriller from 1959 is based on a true story about a violent bank robbery that took place in the US & stars several of the real-life participants of the incident, mainly the police officers who attended & foiled the real-life robbery. The film uses a novel approach to make the film about the lives of the robbers in the week leading up to the robbery & the dangerous complications that upended it.
But while the film has a robust formula & the actors give consistently good performances, particularly Molly McCarthy as Steve McQueen's unstable former girlfriend, the film ultimately staggers due to a lack of purpose. Most of the film consists of character-driven melodrama over the gang's priorities & Ann's fragile mental state, but this is ultimately nothing more than padding for the robbery. And when the robbery does come, it is somewhat a disappointment due to the lack of time it takes up & ends up feeling anticlimactic. If you're a fan of Steve McQueen, this might do passably well as one of the actor's early credits but as far as heist films go, it is decidedly average.
This crime thriller from 1959 is based on a true story about a violent bank robbery that took place in the US & stars several of the real-life participants of the incident, mainly the police officers who attended & foiled the real-life robbery. The film uses a novel approach to make the film about the lives of the robbers in the week leading up to the robbery & the dangerous complications that upended it.
But while the film has a robust formula & the actors give consistently good performances, particularly Molly McCarthy as Steve McQueen's unstable former girlfriend, the film ultimately staggers due to a lack of purpose. Most of the film consists of character-driven melodrama over the gang's priorities & Ann's fragile mental state, but this is ultimately nothing more than padding for the robbery. And when the robbery does come, it is somewhat a disappointment due to the lack of time it takes up & ends up feeling anticlimactic. If you're a fan of Steve McQueen, this might do passably well as one of the actor's early credits but as far as heist films go, it is decidedly average.