5 Against the House

While the heist and the last half hour is pretty good. It is dragged down by the uninteresting protagonists. Firstly they are all clearly way too old to be students, even if they are Korean vets. Secondly while as group they do convey a fun sense of friendship, individually they are rather bland or just plain annoying, the later mostly goes for Alvy Moore who plays the comic sidekick of the group. Only Brian Keith's character becomes interesting, since his development drives the story.

This is not really a crime drama, however it doesn't commit to anything. It seems like the film wants to be about damaged men returning from war, but it just uses this aspect as an excuse so we can still like the Brain Keith charterer. This is a well made movie, that lacked the commitment to be great.

The main problem is the ridiculous amount of pre-heist buildup. The meat of the movie is in the last half hour or so, but once you get there, it's pretty good meat. It's not really "true" noir, but it's close enough, especially at the climax. The earlier parts of the movie have a lot of comic dialogue, most of which is actually quite well-written. Karlson also shoots the film very well with a number of very good shots. A flawed but generally fun picture.

The movie begins well but has a clunky second act before the thrilling finale.

"Hello fellow kids" those four guys looked way too old to be in college, even if they went to Korea. The heist itself was okay but most of the movie drags on the campus scenes with a freshman who doesn't play an important role, stupid one-liners by Alvy Moore ("Shew"), a romance plot but Kim Novak isn't a femme fatale, and a road trip to Reno that felt like it was depicted in real time. Nice B/W shots. Fav scenes: Novak singing; the cart-hauler was a real hero shoving the cart down the stairs.

The heist scene is an obvious influence on most that came after it but the rest is just kinda boring. Also there's no fucking way that those dudes would be in college

Not karlsons best but has enough of his greatness that it's still better than most. The heist was staged perfectly.