For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The Great Train Robbery follows the standard heist movie blueprint. The team gets assembled to pull off an impossible job, they do all of the complicated prep work, then there is a last minute complication that makes it much more difficult than they expected. What stands out here is the setting, Victorian England, and the much smaller crew of thieves than usual. Most heist movies have a huge crew of 10+ characters that each need to have their characters explored. Here there is just the mastermind (Sean Connery), the pickpocket (Donald Sutherland), the girl (Lesley-Anne Downs), and the greaseman (Wayne Sleep). There are a few others, but their characters are so minor that they do not even get names. Rather than get sidetracked covering side characters, there is a strong focus on moving the plot forward that makes the entire movie more interesting.What also stands out is the impressive stunts that were done mostly without stuntmen. Wayne Sleep really scales a wall and Sean Connery really walks across the top of a moving train. In today's CGI heavy film industry, it is refreshing to see an older movie that stays simpler with its big stunts, but they feel much realer, because they are. A lot of the movie relies on Sean Connery's natural charisma, which is the secret to a good heist movie, and Connery holds up very well compared to Clooney and Sinatra in the Ocean's movies and Newman and Redford in The Sting.

Performances extraordinary all across the board with this one; the acting was quintessentially classical, Sean Connery is a class act whatever he performs in and Donald Sutherland showed some serious weight dipping somewhat out of his comfort zone to star in a very British movie (the guys American).Whether the film is true to life I couldn't say as I wasn't around in the Victorian era, most likely it was beefed up for the big screen, but this matters not as the film was one of the last examples of old-school British film-making.Pierce and Agar are depicted as being cool before cool was even a thing, I couldn't see the real life duo being as cool and crowd pleasing as they are shown in the film, perfect example of how things are altered for the screen; but yes, they are villains no doubt, but not the detestable kind of villain you wish to see get their comeuppance, they're uniquely both the antagonist and the protagonist, you get behind them and root for them even though what they are doing is very illegal..., they are quite clearly anti-hero's. The period setting was astonishing, so many integrate details and due to its era of release, not a shot of CGI in sight, truly masterful. It achieves so much, and appeals to a wide range of genres, from drama to action, from biographical to romance, some may even consider the genre comedy to be prevalent, I certainly found some of the scenes to be rather amusing, such as the whole fiasco with the coffin being taken onto the train. An oldie but a goody, any budding film fan should add this well put together film to their collection.

I remember that in 1979, this was the first movie I paid five dollars for--and I didn't feel cheated. It's a lavish, energetic period crime caper, based on fact, about a daring band of rogues, led by a dapper Sean Connery, plotting an elaborate plan to pilfer gold bars bound for Crimea. Michael Crichton, adapting his own novel, piles on the wit, and directs with more panache than he'd shown before. It's beautifully shot by (and dedicated to) Geoffrey Unsworth, and scored with great Victorian relish by Jerry Goldsmith. Lesley Anne Down is a luscious accomplice, and Donald Sutherland, as a not-too-bright but eager duplicator of ill-gotten keys, is charming in a self- effacing role. It doesn't hang together perfectly, and a couple of times I felt the decent Londoners standing in this bunch's way were being a little too easily duped--they can't have been as naive as all that. Nevertheless, it's a lively entertainment that allows you to pull for the crooks without feeling the least hypocritical.

Before they can rob a safe on a train, thieves must obtain four independent keys kept by three people. The schemes devised to obtain the keys are laughably simplistic, with the plan to steal the final two keys (inexplicably kept in one place) ridiculously drawn out. Attempts at humor fall flat, and the film lacks the dramatic tension necessary for a good heist movie. Crichton not only adapts his own novel, but also directs. Based on the lame evidence presented here, he's not a competent writer or director. Connery and Sutherland are not called upon to flex their acting muscles while Down doesn't appear to have any such muscles. At least the sets and costumes are nice.