The First Great Train Robbery (1979)

I've read a lot of Michael Crichton's novels, and I've seen quite a few movies based on his work (Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Congo, Sphere and Disclosure) but I'd not seen any of the handful of movies he directed in the late seventies/early eighties. Based on his 1975 novel, The Great Train Robbery (the movie apparently acquired the 'First' to differentiate it from the more recent historical Great Train Robbery), is a fun, highly entertaining period piece starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland (and Wayne Sleep!) as a pair of 19th Century gentlemen thieves determined to be the first men to steal from a moving train.

The film looks beautiful, with period costume and sets that Crichton films without the gloss of more recent movies, whether that's because it's from 1979 or not I'm unsure, but rest assured, it all looked great. Connery and Sutherland clearly appear to be having a ball in their roles - Connery is the mastermind behind the scheme to steal gold from the train taking it from London to a channel crossing as payment for soldiers fighting in the Crimea; Sutherland is the expert in lock-breaking and making copies of keys. 

Four keys are needed to open the safe holding the gold on the train, so the first half of the movie shows how the thieves manage to locate and copy these, while the second half features the train robbery itself, along with a brief aftermath. It's a breezy romp of a movie with enjoyable performances all round, and Crichton's directorial skills are as good as his writing (he scripted this too), I particularly liked the sepia-toned, news-reel style of the opening narration. 

There are several tense moments during the pilfering of the keys, and when Connery is walking across the tops of train carriages in a pleasingly pre-CGI, minimal stunt-man sequence. The humour is at times quite broad, as in the Bondian exchange between Connery and a lady friend discussing erections... of buildings of course. I don't think I've ever seen Connery in a role where he appears to be enjoying himself so much. Sutherland's English accent is kept up for most of the running time, and he has some very funny moments disguised as a corpse on the train. I'd quite happily search out other Michael Crichton directed movies in future, otherwise I'd watch this one again.