Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

tnrcooper For fans of intelligent heist movies, this is one you should enjoy. Four well-developed characters come together in order to try and knock off a quiet small-town bank. They all have backstories that make the characters' success or failure interesting to the viewer. They take their job seriously and this draws in the viewer and holds our attention.The acting is not aided by the most interesting writing, and among the actors Crahan Denton deserves the most credit, and the character who doesn't want to go back to prison is also quite good. A young Steve McQueen is astonishingly bland. The script is not particularly imaginative, but the characters are interesting enough and the direction is competent. If you like straight forward heist movies, this is one you'll enjoy.

busterggi I came across the DVD of this by accident at the library. I'd never heard of it but figured, hey, its Steve McQueen so it must be good. And it is.Very noir, no heroes (one borderline heroine though) or villains here - just four guys that took the wrong path and can't figure out any other way to live. One of them even needs the cash from the bank job to pay his lawyer who is defending him on another robbery charge! They're all losers and they know it but the idea of doing anything differently is beyond them. McQueen's character is about as sharp as Moose from Archie comics and probably the dumbest of the bunch. His former girlfriend tries to be his saving grace but he isn't smart enough to see it and you feel sadder for her than any of the four robbers. The weed of crime bears only bitter fruit for all the main characters by the end of the film whether they deserve it or not.The film is done somewhere between the semi-documentary approach of the then-current Untouchables TV series and a straight crime film. Lots of detail, lots of character definition and pretty much zero action until the last ten minutes or so. Had they put quotation marks around the word great it would have made for an accurate ironic title. The lack of budget helps quite a bit - no fancy props or effects could be used, it had to be in b & w and it was probably filmed on location more for the sake of saving the cost of building or renting a set than authenticity.If you like gritty crime films give it a try.

Robert J. Maxwell Sometimes a low budget just simply stops a movie from being the success it might otherwise have been. But the budgetary constrictions can be overcome to some extent by talent and sensitivity, even in the absence of stars. "The Littlest Fugitive" is a good example. Or, heck, look at "Detour" or "Gun Crazy." There's little of that poetry here.The format is that of "The Asphalt Jungle." Four met of diverse temperaments are brought together by the leader, Crahan Denton, to pull an ordinary bank robbery in St. Louis. Nothing elaborate. Nobody crawls through sewers or hacks through walls. The gang simply times the traffic lights and figures out how long it will take for the police to respond to the inevitable alarm. The judgment is that they can empty the tills at the tellers' stations, avoid fooling with the vault, and get away in time.A good deal of the movie describes the relationships between the four thieves. They're all pretty bleak. Nobody cracks a joke or even smiles except at someone else's misfortune. One of the characters is evidently gay, and Steve McQueen is the college drop out who is marginal but takes part in the robbery anyway. The robbery scene itself is extensive and doesn't make too much sense.Not all that much of the plot makes sense either. How did McQueen's girl friend guess that Steve and the rest intended to rob a particular bank? He certainly didn't tell her. I guess that's fulgurating intuition.The dialog isn't bad. A nice scene in a bar with Crahan Denton admitting to McQueen that he was born in 1897 and went to work at twelve to support his alcoholic mother. It's rather touching, despite Denton's delivery. (He acts and sounds like a villain in a 1930s B Western.) McQueen hadn't yet developed any acting chops. He walks around with his mouth open, looking bemused, and he frequently bites his tongue and purses his lips to express tension. And, OMG, is the direction and editing one hundred percent pedestrian or what. The pauses between utterances seem to last as long as the Wurm glaciation. Somebody should have stepped on the gas pedal.The bank robbery itself is a mass of confusion. There's chaos when the cops show up far too early, and without any explanation of why. And it lasts a long time. Often the staging is completely off. Trapped, one of the robbers crawls down a long flight of stairs to the room with the vault and safety deposit boxes. He's all alone, testing doors, climbing walls, looking for a way out. When he realizes there is none, he offs himself, and the spectators upstairs in the bank lobby stare at him, clap their hands to their faces, and scream -- although they can't possibly see him.The sluggish pace and meandering plot -- McQueen has an on/off girl friend -- make for tedium, yet it's not without some appeal. Nice 1950s cars. And St. Louis doesn't yet look like Dresden after World War II.

expandafter A very realistic heist film that is based on an actual crime and uses as a location the bank where the robbery took place.The makers of this film were very professional and did a good job. The only downside to the movie is that it is so sombre; the characters aren't charismatic, witty, or cheerful, and they aren't in the habit of saying things like "Do you feel lucky?" or "Make my day." (On the other hand, that fact adds to the realism.)Steve McQueen performs well, and he's not trying to be Marlon Brando. His character is a young, inexperienced man just out of college who's not too sure of himself and who is trying not to become a habitual criminal.Since the film is in the public domain, a high-resolution copy can be downloaded here: http://www.archive.org/details/Saint_Louis_Bank_Robbery