This movie is an involving, intriguing and ultimately poignant heist thriller. Since the advent of a comedy TV show which took it's name, the TV Guides have taken to describing this film as a 'comedy'. Obviously they've never watched it - the moral is, get your movie info from IMDB, not a rubbish newspaper or magazine TV Guide.
The movie's premise is good - a disenchanted ex-army officer dispairs of success on 'civvy street' so decides to organize his own squad of former soldiers and pull off a military operation with a difference - they will rob a bank. This film was the inspiration to the real-life Great Train Robbery, which involved a 20-man gang stealing £3,500,000 in 1963.
Characterization is good and believable; as with all British movies of the era, there is an excrutiating tendency to overly-ingenious rhetoric, one wonders sometimes how they think of such witty remarks. That aside, it's thoroughly convincing. The film code of the day of course required that no film could ever show a criminal benefiting from his crime, but instead of the usual tiresome accidental spilling of the booty out of a train/car/plane window, we have a more realistic, and indeed somewhat sad resolution.
Yes, it is a bit old now, but if you can hang-up your hang-ups about that, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.
