There must be some correlation between a society's sophistication and its obsession with deviance and were we to look, probably a few hundred PhD theses filed away on the subject. In the wake of the recent 'Mrs. Biggs' comes 'The Great Train Robbery' about the antics of Buster, Biggs and the rest of the criminal gang in 1963. (Not to be confused with the 19th Century attempt on a train that was turned into a novel and then a rather camp film by Michael Crichton in the 1970s, nor the 1903 Western.) Not that it isn't an interesting tale, but the endless fascination induces the same queasiness as those other much-dramatised mid-20th Century cases, the Kray twins and Lord Lucan. Somehow the violence becomes a by-product.
Does this new production avoid that trap? Not entirely. For every shot of sweaty men in dingy rooms in vests, there's a scene of the all-male gang in balaclavas and bowler hats; while they may have spent much time in greasy spoons, what's depicted is a nightclub scene with the gang as erstwhile Goodfellas, and while we're on comparisons, the stylised title sequence bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the late, lamented 'The Hour,
The based-on-truth story is almost undeserving of the script and cast, with Luke Evans as gang leader Reynolds and Neil Maskell as Buster Edwards fleshing out the moral ambiguity and Jack Roth unnerving as Charlie Wilson.
"Mickey Mouse!" spits Buster at a bewildered ex-train driver who asks his name, "and the pleasure's all yours." This 90 minutes (of 180) was the criminals' tale, astonishingly aptly broadcast on the day when the real Ronnie Biggs breathed his last. It was entertainingly tense, despite the outcome being known, presumably, by the majority of the audience. There was no attempt to give the Reynolds gang hearts of gold or good intentions, but the line about not taking guns rings hollow in the wake of the train driver's fate. These were men who took pride in their criminal 'careers', prepared to use violence to get rich without honest work and, far from meticulously planning to the last detail, they left too much to chance to get away with it. In the days of DNA and other advanced forensic evidence, they'd have been lucky to get to Reigate, let alone Rio.
Maybe that's a more palatable explanation for Britain's fascination with them: from the Gunpowder Plot to the Dunkerque evacuation, it's not exactly victories we seem to love to celebrate, but near-misses.
