Fool’s Gold (Telefilm)

 

Picture: C-     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Film: C+

 

 

Heist films used to be common, but they have been few and far between in recent years.  Besides the lukewarm remake of The Italian Job we recently saw, there are not many.  Fool’s Gold (1991) is a British Telefilm (TV Movie) that stars Sean Bean as Micky McAvoy, the ringleader of what was Britain’s biggest gold heist ever.  It still was at presstime.

 

Though the robbery is pulled off beyond expectations, it is the getting-away-with-it part that is not.  At first, it looks like there will be no problem, then information leaks out that gets Micky arrested.  It then becomes a matter of who will turn on who first.  The cats is fair, but Bean out-acts most of the cast, while that cast is not given enough to do.  The problem with writer/director Terry Winsor’s work is that is treats it too much like a drama and police procedural, and not enough of an action film.  In this way, it does not always feel like it is happening in the real world.

 

One could say that the fact that it is a TV movie is holding it back, but there is much more obscene language than you’d hear on U.S. networks and this copy even has a one of those words erased!

 

The full screen image is color poor and has some digital harshness that makes no sense.  It is true that many telefilms do not survive in tact, because they are edited on video instead of film like they should be.  This DVD is issued 12 years later, but certainly does not represent the state of the art picture TV could deliver.  The camerawork is not bad, but does not have the presence or excitement of similar British productions of the last thirty years.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is better, showing its age, but clear enough to hear what is going on.  The only extra is a nice section of text describing some of the most daring robberies to date.

 

Obviously, telefilms are still rarely issued on DVD, so the fact that this one made it all the way from Britain to a Region 1 DVD is amazing.  It must have been a ratings winner.  Bean big-screen success with the likes of the James Bond film Goldeneye, the Jack Ryan/Harrison Ford film Patriot Games, and John Frankenheimer’s great Spy thriller Ronin would be another reason to issue it for genre reasons.  It is ultimately a curio, and it is better than most of the awful Cable and Broadcast U.S. TV films we get now.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo