Brilliant and touching

Better Late Then Never

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Thief Mike Daniels (Albert Finney) plans to break into the biggest bank in England for one last haul. His team sets up a false office in order to interview architects with the idea they can coax the suitable candidate into mapping out their underground digging job. Down-on-his-luck American Stephen Booker (Martin Sheen) seems to be the ideal candidate for the job, but he scoffs at the idea of being a criminal. That is until he finds out his wife (Susannah York) reallllly wants to start up her interior decorating business. OH NOES! So he descends (literally) into a life of crime in order to finance her dream. The "loophole" of the title refers to the fact they will break into the vault through the ground and set off a motion detector, but when the cops arrive they will see no one inside the bank and think it is glitch. I'm a sucker for bank heist pictures for some reason and this one definitely falls into that category. Unfortunately, while it has a great cast and is well made, it really takes no risks. There is some tension in the final third as rain starts to flood the sewer system and the men must rush to get out, but even that is handled rather mundanely. Sheen also sticks out like a sore thumb and it is easy to believe the role was written for a British fellow (his wife is a Brit after all) and then changed to an American to increase potential markets. Still, it is worth a look at least once if you loves you some men digging in confined spaces.

LOOPHOLE is one of those bank heist thrillers that were all the rage in the late '70s and early '80s. Other worthy additions to this sub-genre of filmmaking include SEWERS OF GOLD and A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE. This one's a little slower-paced than those, a little grittier too; it's more of a character piece, with Martin Sheen's protagonist getting plenty of back story in particular. The heist itself doesn't occur until the climax, but it is very well portrayed with a maximum of suspense. Another highlight is the supporting cast, made up of familiar character actors, all of whom do their bit; watch out for Albert Finney and the likes of Jonathan Pryce in an early role.

Actually, I haven't seen the movie -- but three men in Texas rented this movie and were inspired to re-create the crime in 1984. They held a bank president's wife and daughter hostage in exchange for a ransom of $48,000. Once the money was left in a garbage can, the men used the sewer system to gain access to the false bottom of the garbage can... just like in the movie. However, the FBI arrested one of the men, who ratted out the other two, and they were all tried and convicted. Actually, they almost got away with it -- except the woman they'd counted on to be their alibi "remembered" that they'd been at her house in the afternoon, not the morning. Amusingly, the appellate court judge who heard their appeal started his summary of the case with the line, "The background facts to this case read like a movie script." There's a reason for that, Yer Honor! (If you want to read the case, it's United States v. Moore, 786 F.2d 1308.)

A thoroughgoing plan toward husking London's largest and most secure holding bank of the contents of its safety deposit boxes, a quite improbable venture, is basis for action in this nicely finished film that successfully and consistently features valuable understatement in its script. American architect Stephen Booker (Martin Sheen), working and residing in England and married to an English woman (Susannah York), is facing a depressing future after an important contract for which he and his partner have bid is awarded to a competing contestant, leaving Booker's firm essentially fundless and paving the way for what will not be a standardized adventure film. The newly unemployed architect's efforts to find a new position are unsuccessful, as he is repeatedly reminded by those with oversight of the jobs for which he is applying that he is "overqualified", until he is of a sudden hired by one Mike Daniels (Albert Finney) to design a conversion of an entire city block, an assignment that will serve to elide Stephen's rampant personal debts to his banker, played incisively by Robert Morley. However, after Stephen has discovered from documents while developing plans for the project that Daniels, his new boss, is an apparent mountebank, he resigns from his new position, thereby being forced to encounter his ambitious wife's spleen, in addition to that of his banker, so that when Daniels, a proficient safebreaker, urges Booker to rejoin him as part of a carefully selected crew of criminal specialists organized for the bank break-in, Stephen decides that becoming a temporary accomplice is less intolerable than becoming increasingly destitute. And so, into mid-town London's rat infested sewer tunnels goes the skilled team of burglars toward their targeted vault (actually filmed within the Unilever Building upon the north side of Blackfriars Bridge), but their carefully devised heist, that will incidentally free Stephen Booker from his monetary obligations, is fraught with unforeseen complications, realistically presented here by cast and crew. Direction is excellent, focussing upon convincing detail supplied by a well-written screenplay that avoids turgid psychodrama in favour of the mechanics of a scheme that becomes of compelling interest to a viewer who will additionally find the characters of interest simply because their innermost thoughts are not voiced, and the intriguing possibilities suggested by the climax are stimulative. Finney handily earns the acting laurels, dominating his scenes with an engaging performance as an actuating criminal specialist, and there is fine playing by all members of the talented cast, quite synchronous to the refinements soaked throughout the script, with markedly solid turns from Colin Blakely and Alfred Lynch as two of Daniels' henchmen. The superb editing of Ralph Sheldon serves to intensify this well-crafted affair, not distributed within the United Kingdom, and it is salted with the valuable contributions tendered by Michael Reed and his camera, Maurice Cain for always appropriate designing, and Ian Wingrove for the special visual effects, in particular when the sewer exit route to be used by the thieves is flooded following an unforecast downpour.