"Violent Saturday" director Richard Fleischer maintains momentum throughout his gritty, fast-paced, crime thriller "Armored Car Robbery." An obstinate Los Angeles Police Department detective wants to nab a ruthless career criminal for the fatal shooting of his partner during a daring, daylight hold-up. Most heist movies build up to the crime after the villains have invested considerable time and effort in setting up their score. This straightforward, efficiently fashioned B-movie, however, plunges the bad guys into action during the first third of the tale while the remainder of "Armored Car Robbery" depicts the chief villain's futile efforts to evade the authorities. Altogether, this nifty little RKO Radio Pictures' caper doesn't appear to be anything more than a potboiler, but Fleischer puts his serviceable cast through the paces without letting things simmer down. Essentially, Hollywood makes two kinds of armored car heist capers; those where the crime is an inside-job, and those where it is an outside job. "Armored Car Robbery" fits into the latter category. Fleischer and scenarists Earl Fenton and Gerald Drayson Adams keep things plausible throughout this tightly-plotted, 67-minute melodrama. Half of the plausibility here is the method of operation that the criminals utilize.

David Purvis (William Talman, later of TV's "Perry Mason" where he played the chief prosecutor) is a criminal mastermind obsessed with details. He plans to knock off an armored car at Wrigley Stadium in Los Angeles, and he sends the L.A.P.D. some false alarms so he can clock the time it takes for them to reach the stadium. Afterward, he briefs his gang, including Benjamin 'Benny' McBride (Douglas Fowley of "Battleground"),Al Mapes (Steve Brodie of "Badman's Territory"),and William 'Ace' Foster (Gene Evans of "The Steel Helmet") about the stick-up. Purvis describes the robbery as "a one-shot deal" worth a half-million dollars. Purvis stipulates he will take half of the $500-thousand haul, while the other three can split what is left between them. He orders them to "study this routine until it comes out your ears." Fleischer cuts to the following Tuesday when the crime takes place. Meantime, the concept of 'honor among thieves' doesn't apply here when we learn information that Benny doesn't know. Specifically, Purvis is making time with Bennie's high-maintenance burlesque hall dancer wife Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens of "Blonde Dynamite") who wants nothing to do with Benny.

Fleischer cleverly stages the actual robbery. Wheeling up behind the armored car, Foster climbs out to tinker with the overheated engine of his old jalopy. At the right moment, they don gas masks and set-off a gas bomb. A stadium cashier alerts the police. Although Purvis had clocked the police response time at 3 minutes, L.A. Detectives, Lieutenant Jim Cordell (Charles McGraw of "The Narrow Margin") and his partner, Lieutenant Phillips (James Flavin of "G-Men"),are cruising in the vicinity. Cordell and his partner go into action with their revolvers blazing, and the criminals blast away at them, with Purvis dropping Phillips, but not before Cordell hits Benny. Mapes whips up in the getaway car, and the criminals take off with Cordell hot on their heels until Purvis stars his windshield with a bullet and a deliver truck crosses his path, forcing him to swerve and lose sight of them. Nevertheless, Benny is badly wounded and the hoods are rattled. Cordell gets gung-ho rookie Detective Danny Ryan (Don McGuire of "Humoresque") to replace Phillips. The police kill Foster but capture Mapes, and Ryan decides to masquerade as Mapes and find out what Yvonne knows about Purvis. The cops install microphones in her dressing room and wire her automobile, like Burt Reynolds and his team would later do the heroine in "Sharky's Machine." The final showdown at the L.A. airport has Purvis and Yvonne taking a chartered two-engine aircraft for parts unknown. The police warn the tower, and the tower halts the aircraft. Purvis thrusts his revolver into the pilot's neck, but an incoming plane prevents them from taking off, and the cops are breathing down Purvis' neck. Scrambling out of the plane, he hoofs it across the tarmac, but Cordell brings him down. Purvis recovers, but it's too late. The plane that kept them from taking off collides with him and kills him. Of course, this scene is nothing like a similar scene in the Charles Bronson thriller "Break Out" where a propeller shredded a guy.

"Armored Car Robbery" qualifies as a film noir melodrama owing to lenser Guy Roe's high-contrast photography, the gritty urban settings, and the paranoia of Talman's criminal experiences as the robbery unravels. The police procedural part of the action includes some pre "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation" scenes where the laboratory technicians help point the detectives in the right direction. In many ways, the vicious brain behind the robbery foreshadows the kind of criminal that Robert De Niro portrayed in "Heat." The William Talman thug reprimands his accomplices for jotting down anything incriminating that could be used against them as a clue. Furthermore, he goes to extreme lengths to appear as invisible as possible, right down to slicing the labels off his apparel with a razor blade. Mind you, since the Production Code Administration was still calling the shots in Hollywood, "Armored Car Robbery" is rather predictable because you know that the hoodlums aren't going to get away with the loot. In other words, this is another crime-does-not pay movie. Nevertheless, despite his doomed future, the cunning villain emerges as a more interesting character than the cops chasing him.

"Armored Car Robbery" is well-worth watching if you enjoy heist thrillers.

Wow, was I ever impressed by this little film. While ARMORED CAR ROBBERY is not an especially sexy title and the film possesses no real star power, it is a wonderfully effective and superbly written little B-movie directed by a young Richard Fleischer. So far in his career Fleischer had directed some shorts and a couple undistinguished films and it was several years before he gained fame with THE NARROW MARGIN (also a wonderful B-film starring Charles McGraw),THE VIKINGS and SOYLENT GREEN. So, since he was an unknown, they gave him mostly unknowns for the film. The biggest name in it was Charles McGraw--a great heavy and supporting actor who'd been around but still hadn't made a name for himself. Additionally, William Talman plays the leader of the bad guys and while you most likely won't recognize his name, he is the man who played Hamilton Burger on the "Perry Mason" TV show.

While McGraw was as wonderful as I'd expected since I'd seen him in quite a few great Film Noir movies, I was particularly impressed by Talman. As Ham Burger, he was a bland and one-note character--the jerk who ALWAYS lost to Perry Mason. But here, he was a very cold, calculating and scary man because he was so believable and amoral. It's a darn shame that this role didn't result in better roles--he really showed he could act.

The film is naturally about an armored car robbery and it was rather straight-forward in its plotting. However, because the dialog and the rest of the writing was so true to life, it really jumped out at me. While it did have a few great Noir-like lines (spoken mostly by the great McGraw),it emphasized reality over style and seemed like a very honest crime drama more than anything else. While it lacked the tension of THE NARROW MARGIN, it made up for it with quality at every level--resulting in a marvelous and generally unrecognized little gem. Watch this film--it's dandy.

'Armored Car Robbery' happened to pop up in my recommended for you section not too long ago. It was hard to ignore it, and decided not to, as the story did interest me reading of it. As did the title (a simple one but grabs the attention nonetheless),there are some good heist/robbery films out there, classic film has always been dear to my heart and Richard Fleischer was no stranger to making interesting films.

Which is what 'Armored Car Robbery' turned out to be when finally getting aroud to watching it. It is not a great film and it has faults, never will it be a personal favourite but in all fairness there are so many of those out of such a large number of viewed films. 'Armored Car Robbery' is also though a good film that maintained my attention throughout and has a lot of strengths, it is sad it's not better known today because it does have enough to it to warrant more exposure.

Did feel that at just over an hour that 'Armored Car Robbery' is rather too on the short side, it could have done with fifteen minutes more perhaps, which the film could have dedicated to making Don McGuire's rather anaemic subplot more interesting. Despite some nice atmospheric photography the low budget in the production values does show, there is a hasty look to them.

Charles McGraw was mostly fine to me, the tough approach working well with him, he does give intensity and he looks committed. He does have one-dimensional moments though, with him overdoing in places the grumbling gruffer side to his character.

However, cannot say anything bad about anything else. Regarding the rest of the cast, Adele Jergens is luminous and is anything but bland but it is a chillingly cold blooded William Talman who takes the acting honours here. Fleischer directs assuredly while the attention never wavers watching the film.

Thanks to a great job with the atmosphere and maintaining a high level of suspense throughout. Also liked that it didn't shy away from realism and was honest, which did allow for some uncompromising moments. The climax, which influenced Stanley Kubrick, is a powerful one. The script is lean and tightly structured with no extraneous fat.

In summation, good film worthy of more attention. 7/10 Bethany Cox