| The Brink's Job | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | William Friedkin |
| Produced by | Dean Tavoularis |
| Written by | Walon Green based on the book Big Stick-Up at Brinks by Noel Behn |
| Starring | Peter Falk Warren Oates |
| Music by | Richard Rodney Bennett |
| Release date(s) | December 8, 1978 |
| Running time | 104 min |
| Language | English |
The Brink's Job is a 1978 film directed by William Friedkin and starring Peter Falk, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield, Warren Oates, Gena Rowlands, and Paul Sorvino. It is based on the Brink's robbery in Boston, where almost 3 million dollars were stolen.
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Dean Tavoularis, Angelo P. Graham, George R. Nelson).[1]
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Small-time Boston crook Tony Pino (Peter Falk) tries to make a name for himself. He and his five associates attempt to pull off a large-scale robbery whenever they could. After Tony and his gang easily rob over $100,000 in cash from a Brinks Armored Car, Tony disguises himself as a sparkplug salesman and is able to get inside Brinks' large and so-called "impregnable fortress" headquarters in the city's North End, a company renowned for its unbreachable security and private banking throughout the East Coast. Once inside, Tony realizes that Brinks is anything but a fortress and the employees treat the money "like garbage". Still wary of Brinks' image, Tony breaks in one night after casing the building to find that all but two doors in the building are locked, and one is easily bypassed by leaping a gate. The only thing locked in the building is the vault. Also, Tony realizes that unlike what Brinks claims, there is only a 10-cent alarm in the vault room itself, and is almost impossible to set off. Assumingly, Brinks had made so much of a presence and intimidation as the most secure bank there was, they had not locked the doors. Pino then begins to plan out the robbery, using the rooftop of a neighboring building as a watch tower.
After realizing that Brinks is his for the taking, Tony and his dim brother-in-law Vinnie (Allen Garfield) put together a motley gang of thieves to rob Brinks. They include the debonair Jazz Maffie (Paul Sorvino) and the slightly deranged Iwo Jima veteran, Specs O'Keefe (Warren Oates), who proposes to blow open the Brink's safe with a bazooka. Over the crew's objections, Pino also invites the arrogant fence Joe McGinnis (Peter Boyle) to be in on the job.
Together, the robbers, led by Pino, on the night of Jan. 17th, 1950, make off with more than a million dollars in cash, along with another million-plus in securities and checks. Brink's, a company that prides itself in the safekeeping of money, is nationally embarrassed by what the press is calling "the crime of the century." Even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Sheldon Leonard) takes a personal interest in finding the culprits, even so much as creating a make-shift FBI Office in Boston.
Law enforcement agents begin rounding up suspects. They come to the home of Tony and Mary Pino, as they often do for crimes in the area. Mary is so familiar with them by now, she makes the cops dinner. Tony is brought in for questioning, but reacts with indignation at being accused.
The crooks begin to crack, however. McGinnis infuriates them by destroying a large sum of the hold-up money, claiming the bills could be traced. He also hangs onto the rest, defying threats by Pino and his cohorts to hand over their shares.
Specs and another of the gang, Stanley Gusciora, go on the road to meet his "sugar doughnut" in Pittsburgh, where they are picked up by Pennsylvania State Police on a burglary charge enroute at Bradford, Pennsylvania and are each handed a long jail sentence, Gusciora at the Western Penitentiary-Pittsburgh . Specs grows more and more disturbed behind bars, demanding that money from his cut be sent to his ill sister. In interrogation, Specs and Stanley are pressured more each day to reveal whatever they might know about the Brink's job. Specs ultimately confesses.
One by one, the rest of the gang is apprehended, mainly by the Boston Police Department. Tony is on his way to jail in Boston and so is Vinnie, but they unexpectedly find themselves hailed as heroes by people on the street for having pulled off one of the great crimes of all time. One teen remarks to Pino, "You're the greatest thief who ever lived! Nobody will ever do what you did Tony!"
The movie was filmed primarily on location in Boston. Locations included:
Ironically, in August 1978, 15 unedited reels of the film were stolen at gunpoint. The robbers demanded a $600,000 ransom. The money was never paid, because the robbers, showing a distinct lack of filmmaking knowledge, hijacked outtakes and dailies, positive prints of negatives were being held by Technicolor in New York City. The material was replaced with no significant delay. The robbers, however, made a ransom call, which triggered an investigation by the FBI. During the ransom call, Friedkin told the robbers to "get a projector and enjoy the film; it was all theirs".[2]
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