MartinHafer "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.

Spikeopath 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 its 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 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 and naturally some contrivances are to be taken with a pinch of salt, but this is a good and enjoyable viewing experience even though it doesn't push towards the upper echelons of other heist movies in the film noir universe. 7/10

Paularoc Five men rob a train of ten million dollars in gold bullion and then off load the bullion into three trucks, one of which is a tanker. The mechanics of the robbery and the subsequent hiding of the bullion on the trucks is shown in great detail and is interesting because of the weight of the gold. And because of the weight and amount of the gold, the police know it has to be transported by truck and have roadblocks and weighing stations set up to examine trucks. We do learn a little bit about each of the characters but the focus, quite rightly, is on the heist and subsequent capture of the thieves and this is done very well indeed with occasionally riveting camera work. The Jeanne Cooper character is an interesting one for the time. Although a girlfriend of Raymond's character, she is not conniving, stupid, or timid but actually contributes in carrying out the plan (albeit somewhat reluctantly). The culprits are done in by either stupidity or implausible coincidence. Nonetheless, it is a fast moving and intriguing caper film well worth a watch.

GManfred This is a driving movie. I don't mean compelling, I mean driving, as in trucks driving and driving, which takes up about an hour of the picture (it is 72 minutes long). It is about a train robbery by five pretty savvy dudes, among them Gene Raymond, Wayne Morris and Elisha Cook, Jr. We learn that they have been around the block, with some considerable jail time among them.And so, after the robbery they drive. Nothing of note happens except a few isolated incidents, wherein the group is reduced to two. The incidents are so innocuous that you hardly notice, so ordinary and lacking in tension is the storyline.The ending is fairly good, but by that time you have been so numbed by the preceding 68 minutes that it's a nice feeling to get the whole thing over with. It is a pretty good movie, and that's the best I can say for it. You know that old Show Biz song, "That's Entertainment"? I didn't hear it.