We begin with a rural road race where Mickey Rooney finishes second and is observed by two men who decide he's just right to be part of something-we don't learn until much later what they have in mind.
Most of the first 50 minutes of this film shows Rooney's character, Eddie, getting acquainted with a female customer in the garage where Eddie works, where she seems interested in him, but all he does is talk about cars and his desire to drive in big road races in Europe. We later learn she is "a friend" of Steve, who was one of the two men watching Eddie in that opening-scene race.
One scene had a big flub. In front of Barbara's apartment, Eddie drives a little MG and parks right in front of her car. He fixes her car and she drives away-with the MG nowhere in sight.
Then they attend a party at Steve's together and Steve seems to want to talk cars with Eddie, but they keep getting interrupted by another woman who is a bit drunk. There seems no point in her part other than annoying.
Eddie takes her home-as Barbara says, only four hours before he needs to go to work. Still not even a good night kiss, and he leaves, not noticing Steve and his friend Harold are sitting in a car right across the street. Steve tells Harold he'll "be back in ten minutes," so we know he isn't going there for a late night romantic visit. I say that although his relationship with Barbara is made clear by several kisses. The surprise visit was to talk about whether or not Eddie can be persuaded to do their job. We are over 40 minutes into the film and still have no idea what sort of job is being planned.
Later we see Eddie entering the beach house where Steve and Harold are waiting to tell him about their plans. Fully 52 minutes after the film begins, we learn that they are planning a bank robbery and merely want him to drive the getaway car. Eddie totally rejects the offer on moral grounds and leaves. He later talks to Barbara who doesn't truly urge him to do it, merely talks about the desire for easy money. I thought it key in this discussion that she never suggests they will be together after the robbery, only saying she wants him to go to Europe and drive in big races. He says "no" and it appears they are through.
About 10 minutes later, we see Eddie has decided to join in the plot. The mastermind shows him movies depicting what the road looks like when being driven over but apparently he is never given a single chance to drive it himself. Here the details of the plan are explained.
We come to the holdup scene and then a long getaway with the men racing away, at speeds up to 100 MPH on this narrow, dirt, winding, twisting road. The rest of the story deals with Barbara attempts to let Eddie down gently, and how things go awry. I won't reveal those ending scenes.
My complaints focus on how boring those first fifty minutes were before we learned about the robbery. OK, Eddie is awkward with women, but the way Barbara behaved we knew this would not be a real romance. She seemed to like him, but that was it. He seemed comfortable only with cars and engines.
As for the bank robbery, as explained Steve's plan was to take this 19-mile back road away from the Palm Springs bank back toward Los Angeles with his race car driver getting them past the points where the police will set up road blocks before they do so. He details that the teller will open the bank at 8:05. At 8:10 the vault opens. Harold will do the actual robbery, needing to be out of the bank by 8:15. The rest of the workers arrive at 8:28. He states that "by the time the others arrive and notify police, we'll have 22 minutes before road blocks can be set up." He further explains they need four minutes to slowly drive through town to get to the highway where they will race away. So they'll have 18 minutes to go 19 miles, having just one minute to spare.
Why in the world would this bank have a procedure that every day the vault opens while only one person is inside? How do all the other employees always arrive right at 8:28 a.m.? How could the crooks possibly know the exact time police can set up roadblocks at specific points? I dare say that the time to set them up depends on where exactly their patrol cars are when they hear about the crime. The one car that would be sent where the crooks will be, could have had say, a traffic stop a few minutes earlier that leaves the officer two minutes closer to where he will be sent, and, given the time line, that foils the whole crooked scheme.
I've never worked anywhere where a group of employees arrive exactly at the same time. If they need to report at 8:30-as suggested-probably two will be there 8-10 minutes early most days, and a couple others about 5 minutes early. Everyone getting there exactly two minutes early is preposterous.
The biggest flaw in this is the notion of the crime mastermind, Steve, that it is smart to approach an honest man with no criminal history and within a week of meeting him tell him all about his illegal plan and invite him to join in for a big payday.
It would be far easier to plan the crime without the need for this fast getaway. With just a minute to spare, they could easily get delayed by one farm tractor or other slow vehicle on that escape route that slowed them down.
As executed, Harold gets into the teller's car at his house and surprises him, riding with him to the bank, with Steve and Eddie following closely in the souped up escape car. When the teller is untied (I presume that's what they did) he could fully describe the car he saw, with two men inside, following them to the bank. They could have just been waiting near the bank and then their getaway car would be totally unknown to any cop in a roadblock.
If after the holdup, the man the teller saw close-up went one way, and Steve and Barbara slowly drove in another direction, neither would be likely suspects for the roadblock cops to search, since they were looking for three men. They were stealing $150,000 total, when divided into two bundles, it could easily be hidden and not found when cops stopped either party at the roadblock. No need for a death-defying dash along a 19-mile mountain road at all. No need to bring an honest man into the scene.
Frankly, Steve could have gotten into the teller's car like Harold did, committed the holdup, and jumped into his own car-perhaps with Barbara driving and the two could have gotten away cleanly and not had to let Harold have half of the loot. As shown, Steve's part was only in the planning, then riding along in the getaway car. He didn't need Harold at all.
Between the totally illogical, needlessly-risky, overly-complicated robbery scheme that could have seen Steve and Barbara come away with $150,000, but instead dwindle to $67,500 after splitting most with Harold and paying Eddie his 10%, and the 50 minutes of boring not-really-romantic scenes between Eddie and Barbara, I cannot give this movie more than a 4, despite the presence of Rob Petrie's neighbor Jerry Helper (Jerry Paris), his fellow former Untouchable Lee Hobson (Paul Picerni), and Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly).
Rooney's character didn't get us to care about him. Not even before he turned crooked.
Most of the first 50 minutes of this film shows Rooney's character, Eddie, getting acquainted with a female customer in the garage where Eddie works, where she seems interested in him, but all he does is talk about cars and his desire to drive in big road races in Europe. We later learn she is "a friend" of Steve, who was one of the two men watching Eddie in that opening-scene race.
One scene had a big flub. In front of Barbara's apartment, Eddie drives a little MG and parks right in front of her car. He fixes her car and she drives away-with the MG nowhere in sight.
Then they attend a party at Steve's together and Steve seems to want to talk cars with Eddie, but they keep getting interrupted by another woman who is a bit drunk. There seems no point in her part other than annoying.
Eddie takes her home-as Barbara says, only four hours before he needs to go to work. Still not even a good night kiss, and he leaves, not noticing Steve and his friend Harold are sitting in a car right across the street. Steve tells Harold he'll "be back in ten minutes," so we know he isn't going there for a late night romantic visit. I say that although his relationship with Barbara is made clear by several kisses. The surprise visit was to talk about whether or not Eddie can be persuaded to do their job. We are over 40 minutes into the film and still have no idea what sort of job is being planned.
Later we see Eddie entering the beach house where Steve and Harold are waiting to tell him about their plans. Fully 52 minutes after the film begins, we learn that they are planning a bank robbery and merely want him to drive the getaway car. Eddie totally rejects the offer on moral grounds and leaves. He later talks to Barbara who doesn't truly urge him to do it, merely talks about the desire for easy money. I thought it key in this discussion that she never suggests they will be together after the robbery, only saying she wants him to go to Europe and drive in big races. He says "no" and it appears they are through.
About 10 minutes later, we see Eddie has decided to join in the plot. The mastermind shows him movies depicting what the road looks like when being driven over but apparently he is never given a single chance to drive it himself. Here the details of the plan are explained.
We come to the holdup scene and then a long getaway with the men racing away, at speeds up to 100 MPH on this narrow, dirt, winding, twisting road. The rest of the story deals with Barbara attempts to let Eddie down gently, and how things go awry. I won't reveal those ending scenes.
My complaints focus on how boring those first fifty minutes were before we learned about the robbery. OK, Eddie is awkward with women, but the way Barbara behaved we knew this would not be a real romance. She seemed to like him, but that was it. He seemed comfortable only with cars and engines.
As for the bank robbery, as explained Steve's plan was to take this 19-mile back road away from the Palm Springs bank back toward Los Angeles with his race car driver getting them past the points where the police will set up road blocks before they do so. He details that the teller will open the bank at 8:05. At 8:10 the vault opens. Harold will do the actual robbery, needing to be out of the bank by 8:15. The rest of the workers arrive at 8:28. He states that "by the time the others arrive and notify police, we'll have 22 minutes before road blocks can be set up." He further explains they need four minutes to slowly drive through town to get to the highway where they will race away. So they'll have 18 minutes to go 19 miles, having just one minute to spare.
Why in the world would this bank have a procedure that every day the vault opens while only one person is inside? How do all the other employees always arrive right at 8:28 a.m.? How could the crooks possibly know the exact time police can set up roadblocks at specific points? I dare say that the time to set them up depends on where exactly their patrol cars are when they hear about the crime. The one car that would be sent where the crooks will be, could have had say, a traffic stop a few minutes earlier that leaves the officer two minutes closer to where he will be sent, and, given the time line, that foils the whole crooked scheme.
I've never worked anywhere where a group of employees arrive exactly at the same time. If they need to report at 8:30-as suggested-probably two will be there 8-10 minutes early most days, and a couple others about 5 minutes early. Everyone getting there exactly two minutes early is preposterous.
The biggest flaw in this is the notion of the crime mastermind, Steve, that it is smart to approach an honest man with no criminal history and within a week of meeting him tell him all about his illegal plan and invite him to join in for a big payday.
It would be far easier to plan the crime without the need for this fast getaway. With just a minute to spare, they could easily get delayed by one farm tractor or other slow vehicle on that escape route that slowed them down.
As executed, Harold gets into the teller's car at his house and surprises him, riding with him to the bank, with Steve and Eddie following closely in the souped up escape car. When the teller is untied (I presume that's what they did) he could fully describe the car he saw, with two men inside, following them to the bank. They could have just been waiting near the bank and then their getaway car would be totally unknown to any cop in a roadblock.
If after the holdup, the man the teller saw close-up went one way, and Steve and Barbara slowly drove in another direction, neither would be likely suspects for the roadblock cops to search, since they were looking for three men. They were stealing $150,000 total, when divided into two bundles, it could easily be hidden and not found when cops stopped either party at the roadblock. No need for a death-defying dash along a 19-mile mountain road at all. No need to bring an honest man into the scene.
Frankly, Steve could have gotten into the teller's car like Harold did, committed the holdup, and jumped into his own car-perhaps with Barbara driving and the two could have gotten away cleanly and not had to let Harold have half of the loot. As shown, Steve's part was only in the planning, then riding along in the getaway car. He didn't need Harold at all.
Between the totally illogical, needlessly-risky, overly-complicated robbery scheme that could have seen Steve and Barbara come away with $150,000, but instead dwindle to $67,500 after splitting most with Harold and paying Eddie his 10%, and the 50 minutes of boring not-really-romantic scenes between Eddie and Barbara, I cannot give this movie more than a 4, despite the presence of Rob Petrie's neighbor Jerry Helper (Jerry Paris), his fellow former Untouchable Lee Hobson (Paul Picerni), and Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly).
Rooney's character didn't get us to care about him. Not even before he turned crooked.