I ran across this while reading about Joseph Cotten (of CITIZEN KANE and SHADOW OF DOUBT, the Hitchcock film, fame) and discovered it was available online, and thought why not?
Bank employee Jim Osborne (Cotten) has a good life and realizes this fully, but stilldecides something is missing. After getting a promotion, he learns his bank currently has an unusually high amount of cash (a million bucks) and decides what he's been missing is money. Of course. Long story short, he hatches a plan to steal the money and escape, with his family, to Brazil after learning they have no extradition treaty with the US. His plan involves stealing the money on a Friday night and being in Rio de Janeiro by Sunday night before anyone even notices the money is gone. However, the bank will begin opening Saturdays the following week, so Osborne literally only has days to pull this off.
The plan to steal the money goes off without a hitch, but due to the short notice everything from his family's passports to flight plans get screwed up. While they're stranded in New Orleans, a suspicious airline employee checks Osborne's baggage and finds the money. When the film was made, it wasn't illegal to make large, undeclared cash transactions (today, you can't leave or enter the country with more than $10,000 in cash without declaring it) but he's, of course, even more suspicious. Osborne claims to be traveling on bank business, but no bank would send a man and his family traveling with so much cash and no guards.
Osborne essentially bullies his way through the situation, but as a result of this, they miss their plane and while Osborne is trying to figure some other solution out, his wife discovers what's going on. She is horrified and leaves him, taking their daughter back with her to Los Angeles.
Osborne, in a rare good decision by a protagonist in a crime film, decides his family means more to him than the money and devises a plan to return the cash without anyone the wiser. He does so and goes into work as usual Monday morning, but is so exhausted and stressed out, his coworkers send him home, thinking he has the flu or something.
It's not a bad film, but it's an unusual one. Normally with a crime film, you're half-way rooting for the criminal to fail and get what he deserves while another part of you wants him to succeed and to see how he does it. In this case, Osborne fails in one way, but it's--let's say--the best possible way. His plan didn't work, but he isn't caught and everything resets with Osborne having learned a valuable lesson without having to pay the price for doing so. It's a happy ending, but a happy ending to a crime film seems wrong somehow.
For all that, it's not a bad film. It's well-written, acted and shot and has a certain style I usually associate with a different type of film, while retaining the sweaty, fearful tension of a crime film.
Give it a chance yourself, if you run across it.
The plan to steal the money goes off without a hitch, but due to the short notice everything from his family's passports to flight plans get screwed up. While they're stranded in New Orleans, a suspicious airline employee checks Osborne's baggage and finds the money. When the film was made, it wasn't illegal to make large, undeclared cash transactions (today, you can't leave or enter the country with more than $10,000 in cash without declaring it) but he's, of course, even more suspicious. Osborne claims to be traveling on bank business, but no bank would send a man and his family traveling with so much cash and no guards.
Osborne essentially bullies his way through the situation, but as a result of this, they miss their plane and while Osborne is trying to figure some other solution out, his wife discovers what's going on. She is horrified and leaves him, taking their daughter back with her to Los Angeles.
Osborne, in a rare good decision by a protagonist in a crime film, decides his family means more to him than the money and devises a plan to return the cash without anyone the wiser. He does so and goes into work as usual Monday morning, but is so exhausted and stressed out, his coworkers send him home, thinking he has the flu or something.
It's not a bad film, but it's an unusual one. Normally with a crime film, you're half-way rooting for the criminal to fail and get what he deserves while another part of you wants him to succeed and to see how he does it. In this case, Osborne fails in one way, but it's--let's say--the best possible way. His plan didn't work, but he isn't caught and everything resets with Osborne having learned a valuable lesson without having to pay the price for doing so. It's a happy ending, but a happy ending to a crime film seems wrong somehow.
For all that, it's not a bad film. It's well-written, acted and shot and has a certain style I usually associate with a different type of film, while retaining the sweaty, fearful tension of a crime film.
Give it a chance yourself, if you run across it.
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