The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959)

Memorable, crazy movie

Boring

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

George Fowler, a bright kid planning to go to college, agrees to join a gang of crooks in order to rob a bank in St. Louis. His friend & fellow robber, Gino, is due to be sent to jail in three weeks time for an unrelated crime & plans to make this his last heist. He is also the brother of Ann, George's former girlfriend. They case the bank & make preparations to rob it. But Ann, who is emotionally unstable following her break-up with George, begins to suspect that her brother & former boyfriend are up to robbing banks & decides to secretly sabotage their efforts by writing a warning on the bank's window in lipstick. When the leader of the gang, the psychotic John Egan, finds out, he kills Ann & forces George to take a more direct role in the robbery. But the heist ends up a spectacular failure.This crime thriller from 1959 is based on a true story about a violent bank robbery that took place in the US & stars several of the real-life participants of the incident, mainly the police officers who attended & foiled the real-life robbery. The film uses a novel approach to make the film about the lives of the robbers in the week leading up to the robbery & the dangerous complications that upended it.But while the film has a robust formula & the actors give consistently good performances, particularly Molly McCarthy as Steve McQueen's unstable former girlfriend, the film ultimately staggers due to a lack of purpose. Most of the film consists of character-driven melodrama over the gang's priorities & Ann's fragile mental state, but this is ultimately nothing more than padding for the robbery. And when the robbery does come, it is somewhat a disappointment due to the lack of time it takes up & ends up feeling anticlimactic. If you're a fan of Steve McQueen, this might do passably well as one of the actor's early credits but as far as heist films go, it is decidedly average.

Six years after beginning his movie career, Steve McQueen put himself in the driver's seat with this early film. Watch it closely and you'll see this true life story has him playing the 'wheel man' during the St. Louis bank robbery. Having watched this movie icon, grow and mature over the years, you can almost notice as McQueen chafes under the director's yoke and script constrains of this black and white film. Observe if you will his natural body language silently wish he could break out of the character's mold and do his on screen magic. However, this story is based on an actual incident and once you're in, we can only sit and watch as McQueen does his best to fill in the role of the by-gone athletic hero gone bad. The men he joins lack cohesiveness and each brings his own problem to a crime, fraught with pitfalls. But each needs their $20,000 share, so to hell with the dangers. Any fan of the late McQueen can readily see the 'diamond-in-the-rough' the young star is and realize what an exceptional gem, he will become. Unlike the movie itself which left much to be desired on nearly every level, Steve McQueen rises above it and we almost wish we could follow him to a sequel of this story. ***

is a must to see. Before he became "one of the System's bad boys". He is refreshing and I would tell any true Steve McQueen fan to see this movie just on the strength of his performance.The movie itself is a hoot! I mean with not so evasive homosexual references and shades of Noir...and in the early 50's!!....it is worth seeing. I liked it.It is a story of the "Great St. Louis Bank Robbery" in the early 50's....great period piece for those of us who were alive then....and for those who were not to see what a section of Americana looked like....Using the real people involved in the actual heist is great! Non-Actors who are reliving their dream or nightmare....depending.See it. You won't be disappointed.

(Some Spoilers) True story about the armed robbery of the Southwest Bank in St. Louis and the fate of the four bank robbers who participated in it. Getting a crew together to knock off the Southwest Bank head crook John Egan, Crahan Denton, wan't his boys to case out the bank for a week before they rob it. The robbers spends hours at a time checking every angle and escape route to make sure that the robbery goes off without a hitch. Right from the start things start to go sour when one of the robbers Gino, David Clarke, recruits young George Fowler, Steve McQueen, as the wheel man in the operation. George isn't a hardened criminal and only want's to pull off this job to get enough money for him to finish college and make something of himself.Gino knows Geroge from him being his sisters Ann , Molly McCarthy, boyfriend and feels that he won't choke up when things get hot. That very fact, George being romantically involved with Ann, turns out to be the Achillese Heel of the "Great St. Louis Bank Robbery".Needing a place to stay until the day of the robbery Gino tells George to go see Ann, whom he recently broke up with, an ask her for $50.00 and tell her that he needs it to keep him from being sent back to prison in Chicago.Reluctant at first Ann gives George the money, with a personal check to send to Gino. Later Ann sees him in the city, St. Louis, and knows that he and George are up to no good.Depressed at the thought of Gino and George robbing the Southwest Bank, she saw George case it out from a diner across the street, Ann starts to get so out of hand that she jeopardies the impending bank robbery by getting drunk one evening. Later Ann goes a step farther writing in lipstick "this bank is going to be robbed" on the Southwest Bank's windows. Outraged at Ann's behavior, and George and Gino not being able to control or shut her up, John and his partner Willie take Ann to their hideout where John in a fit of anger throws Ann off the fire-escape killing her. With both Gino and George totally in he dark to what happened to Ann, John and Willie tell them that she flew off to Chicago, the four get ready for the big bank heist. Then for some strange reason George is told that he'll have to take part in the robbery and that Willie is to replace him as the wheel man; it was John's way of keeping Willie quite about his murdering Ann. The fact that Willie is put behind the wheel and George, who's not only a better driver but far more responsible and loyal to the group, was sent into rob the bank turned out to be a complete disaster. John gets shot by the cops with Gino killing himself when he saw there was no way out, and the thought of him going back to prison was just too much for him to take. George ending up badly wounded is arrested and sent to prison for the rest of his life. This destroys his dream of being able to finish his education and become an honest and upstanding citizen in the community. The man responsible for all this mess happening Willie, the getaway driver, gets away without as much as a scratch on him leaving the three other crooks to face the music, and police bullets. Solid crime caper with Steve McQueen, as George Fowler, doing his best as he methods acts his way through the movie. McQueen goes from a quite and scared college kid to a hardened and unfeeling criminal within the 89 minutes of the film. The ending is something to watch as George almost bleeding to death and holding a young couple hostage in the bank, Eddie and his wife of two months( Larry Gerst & Martha Gable), finally sees the light to what he got himself involved in. If George was as smart as he though he was he should have listen to Ann, when she was still alive,and all this would have never happened to him or her.