Plunder Road (1957)

Posted by
Jon From Seattle

Plunder Road written by Steven Ritch
Directed by Hubert Cornfield
Starring Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris, Elisha Cook, Steven Ritch, Stafford Repp,
Jeanne Cooper

On a rainy night three trucks are heading to a rendezvous point for an elaborately staged train robbery. The train is transporting 10 million dollars in gold bricks. The plan is to rob the train, split the loot up among the three trucks and meet up in Los Angeles.

The leader of the gang is Eddie (Gene Raymond). His plan is just to pull off one job and be done with crime. The other gang members are Skeets (Elisha Cook) a career criminal just released from prison. His wife passed away when was incarcerated and he wants to reconnect with his son and move to Rio de Janiero. Frankie (Steven Ritch), a former race car driver who was banned from racing for rules violations. Commando(Wayne Morris), a cold-hearted former stuntman. Roly (Stafford Repp) a gum-chewing truck driver.

Only the truck with Eddie and Frankie makes it to L.A. They meet up with Eddie's girl Fran (Jeanne Cooper) to melt down the remaining gold and leave the country. Without giving away the ending, they come up with an ingenious plan to get the gold out of the country. But alas, this is film noir and of course no one gets away clean.

This is a tightly directed heist film clocking in at only 72 minutes. Unlike similar films of this genre like The Killing and The Asphalt Jungle, the action starts right away with no set up. There's very little dialogue in the first 20 minutes of the film, the story unfolds visually showing how precisely the robbery was set up. This movie comes late in the noir cycle but holds up quite well. I would like to see a widescreen DVD of this some day as it was in Cinemascope. It's definitely worth a look.