Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov December 27, 2024

Hubert Cornfield's "Plunder Road" (1957) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The only bonus feature on the release is an exclusive new audio commentary recorded by critic Jeremy Arnold. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

The golden runner

Ten years separate Hubert Cornfield’s film noir Plunder Road and Peter Yates’ classic film Robbery. The former comes from the late 1950s, while the latter from the late 1960s. Both films are about incredibly ambitious train robberies, but only the latter recreates a true event. However, the train robbery in the former, which lasts approximately fifteen minutes, is so impressively staged that it almost looks like a rehearsal for the train robbery in the latter, which can only be described as a masterclass organized by professional thieves.

The crew in Plunder Road is smaller. It has only five members: Eddie Harris (Gene Raymond), Frankie Chardo (Steven Ritch), Skeets Jonas (Elisha Cook Jr.), Commando Munson (Wayne Morris), and Roly Adams (Stafford Repp). These men have broken the law in the past, but they are not professional thieves with a long history of tricky jobs done flawlessly. The men have studied how to rob the train passing through Utah and created a plan to get away with the loot. If they pull off the job, there will be no more like it, regardless of how much they pocket. According to their preliminary estimate, they should be able to walk away with a load of U.S. government gold worth ten million dollars.

On an unusually dark and rainy night, the train is derailed and the machinists operating it temporarily neutralized. The men then use a boom truck to transfer several boxes of gold to a second truck that transports them to a warehouse at an unidentified location. The plan is not to try to sneak into Canada, but to get on the highway and reach Los Angeles, where one of the men will reunite with his girlfriend (Jeanne Cooper) before they all cross into Mexico. From there, they will split and head in new directions, never to see each other again. One of the men has already declared his intention to reach Copacabana Beach in Rio.

Several hours later, the loot is loaded into three new trucks -- one loaded with old furniture, one with coffee, and one with fuel. One man gets on the first truck, two on the second, and two on the third. Using different routes, the trucks then head toward the highway. However, several setbacks complicate the men’s seemingly perfect getaway plan.

The pragmatism of Plunder Road is very attractive. It makes the entire robbery -- from the moment the train is derailed to the moment when the men run out of luck -- look strikingly authentic, which is usually what makes genre films like Plunder Road worth seeing. This is not to imply that these genre films can be effective without great characters. They are needed, too. But the execution of the robbery is always the bigger magnet. It is why the better the pragmatism is in these genre films, the better they turn out.

Cornfield worked with a screenplay handed to him by Ritch, who was far more prolific as an actor. A couple of years after scripting and appearing in Plunder Road, Ritch contributed to two other crime films whose pragmatism is even more attractive, Murder by Contract and City of Fear. The former is an old favorite of Marty Scorsese, who has admitted borrowing from it while preparing Taxi Driver.

Plunder Road could have been twenty minutes longer, spending more time with the three trucks on their way to California, preserving some of America’s rural beauty. However, the longer running time undoubtedly would have affected its pragmatism.

Cornfield’s director of photography was Oscar winner Earnest Haller, who lensed such grand classics as Gone with the Wind, Mildred Pierce, and Rebel Without a Cause.

Kino Lorber’s release introduces a recent 4K restoration of Plunder Road sourced from the film’s original camera negative and prepared at Paramount Pictures.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Plunder Road arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Plunder Road made its high-definition debut with this release, produced by Olive Films in 2013. While Plunder Road looks wonderful on it, this release introduces a 4K makeover of the film completed by Paramount Pictures in 2021.

I liked everything that I saw on my system, so I am going to mention first the one area where some additional work could have been done. From time to time, tiny white specks and even a few vertical lines can be seen. Had these minor imperfections been removed, Plunder Road would have looked immaculate. Regardless, I could not be happier with film's current appearance. All visuals boast outstanding delineation, clarity, and depth. A few small density fluctuations are present, but they are introduced by the original cinematography. The grayscale is fantastic. Black and grays are lush but never crush, while the different ranges of whites could not be healthier. All are balanced incredibly well, too. There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. Also, I did not notice any encoding anomalies to report. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

While not a big-budget production, Plunder Road has a music soundtrack that could have been used in one. Indeed, the music is very potent and effortlessly creates a wide range of excellent dynamic contrasts. If you turn up the volume of your system a bit more than usual, I think that you will be quite surprised by what you will hear coming out of your speakers. All exchanges clear, stable, and very easy to follow.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by critic Jeremy Arnold. It is a good commentary with plenty of observations about the production of Plunder Road, its style and genre identity, and the people that made it.

Plunder Road Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It does not take long to realize that the stolen gold will never cross the Mexican border and the thieves will have to improvise to stay alive. What is unclear is how many of them will manage to do so. I like old-fashioned heist films, and Plunder Road reminded me of several whose pragmatism is very attractive. Plunder Road made its high-definition debut more than a decade ago, but this release introduces a very nice recent 4K makeover of it, prepared by the folks at Paramount Pictures. It is included in Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema XXII, a three-disc box set. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.