Armored Car Robbery (1950)

☆ ☆ ☆

Armored Car Robbery (1950) – R. Fleischer

The title says it all – except that the robbery itself is over in the first 15 minutes of the film (admittedly only 67 minutes long in total).  All that follows is the aftermath, which is actually a pretty taut police procedural. So, we shift from learning the plans of the clever crook who masterminds the heist (played by William Talman of Perry Mason fame) to the methods of the police lieutenant who tracks him down.  Director Richard Fleischer knows how to increase the tension (e.g., a car engine stalls out at just the wrong time) and to keep things moving, just as he did in the subsequent Narrow Margin and Violent Saturday.  Not sure what happened with him later as he moved into Disney fare and other oddities (Soylent Green, Conan the Barbarian).  This is a good example of its genre, with a tough-as-nails cop going head to head with a bad guy who keeps his wits about him (until the somewhat inexplicable, but apt, ending punctuates the affair).