Plunder Road (1957)

• Year: 1957
• Released: 05 Dec 1957
• Country: United States
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050847/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Plunder_Road
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, German
• MPA Rating: Approved
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
• Runtime: 72 min
• Writer: Steven Ritch, Jack Charney
• Director: Hubert Cornfield
• Cast: Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris
• Keywords: noir,

	6.9/10
	57% – Audience

Plunder Road Storyline

On a dark night of pelting rain, five men stage a well-planned train robbery and get away with a $10 millionr, nine-ton gold shipment. Dividing the massive haul into three concealed truck loads, the team make a would-be inconspicuous escape across country to what they hope will be a perfect getaway.

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Plunder Road Movie Reviews

In the most daring train robbery of all time…

Plunder Road is directed by Hubert Cornfield and written by Steven Ritch and Jack Charney. It stars Gene Raymond, Jeanne Cooper, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook Jr. and Stafford Repp. Music is by Irving Gertz and cinematography by Ernest Haller.

After pulling off a daring train hold-up, a gang of thieves split up and hit the roads to meet up in Los Angeles in readiness to share their gold bullion spoils…

A poverty row heist noir late in the classic cycle, Plunder Road gets in and does the job without fuss and filler and with no little style. Running at just 72 minutes in length, the first portion of film is devoted to the intricate robbery that is set at night in the sheeting rain (15 minutes worth) and with barely a word spoken. It’s meticulous planning, and thus this appears to be one highly tuned and professional gang of thieves. The rest of the film follows the gang, now travelling in three different vehicles, heading straight to noirville as their inadequacies and paranoia’s come to the fore and noir’s old faithful friend the vagaries of fate shows it’s smirking face.

Cornfield and Haller (Mildred Pierce/The Verdict) atmospherically photograph the picture, using the Scope format to emphasise the impending implosion of the characters’ plans as they move through the various locales and situations. It’s solidly performed by the cast, with old noir hand Cook Junior doing what he does best, and Cornfield manages to eek out much suspense from what essentially is a simple story. The ending is all a bit too quick, some contrivances are to be taken with a pinch of salt, while Gertz’s score is very intrusive for the whole 15 minutes heist sequence. However, this is a good and enjoyable film noir experience, even though it doesn’t quite push towards the upper echelons of other heist movies in the film noir universe. 7/10

A competently made and engaging low budget caper flick.

“Plunder Road” is a low budget crime film with a few familiar faces…and many unfamiliar ones. The leading men you might not be too familiar to you, as the once pretty Gene Raymond and Wayne MOrris are a bit older and more rugged in this film–and I actually think this makes them more believable and I liked their work late in their career. Another one of the crooks is Elisha Cook–a very familiar character actor.

The story is pretty familiar because caper movies were VERY popular during that era. A group of masked robbers bump off a shipment of gold on a train and their planning is meticulous. However, true to most caper films, things start to fall apart during the getaway. The gang is split into teams and one by one, things start to happen to the teams.

Overall, a well directed and interesting cheap film noir flick– worth seeing if you like the genre and quite engaging. Not among the best of its type (such as “Asphalt Jungle”, “The Killing”, “Rififi” or “Grand Slam”)….but still quite nice.

Simple And Tough Thriller

A well planned and executed train robbery is carried out in silence in twelve minutes. The take is over ten million dollars in gold. Now the six thieves — Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook, Jr, Stafford Repp and Steven Rich — have to get it past the roadblocks from border to border.

It’s a decently done B movie, with some nice talent in front of the camera and behind it, too; Ernest Haller runs a nice camera, with an increasingly filled and claustrophobic screen. A little too much time is spent in chat, but what are you going to do when you’re driving a truck several thousand miles, and the voice on the radio is always the same?

Once again, I am impressed by Gene Raymond, whom I had once written off as a pretty-boy actor from the 1930s. This was Wayne Morris’ last movie shoot; one he had shot earlier sat on the shelves for a few years.