Split, The (1968)

Director Gordon Flemyng rounded up a fine cast to pull a daring daylight heist of gate receipts totalling half a million dollars after a sell-out LA Rams football game at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

The members of the old heist gang have all gone off to other pursuits, however, so McClain (former Cleveland Browns fullback Jim Brown) has to round them all up to help pull off “one last big job”. Some of the fellows, though, are somewhat reluctant to pick up their old life.

Dave Negli (Donald Sutherland), for instance, is running a rental car outfit. McClain tails him when he’s delivering a car out in the LA countryside and bashes into him until Dave gives in. McClain then confronts Bert Clinger (Ernest Borgnine) in the health centre he’s running, and smashes him from floor to ceiling to the point of submission.

Gene Hackman, Jack Klugman and Warren Oates are similarly recruited. Diahann Carroll is also on hand as McClain’s ex-wife for some banal love scenes and a rape sequence as absurd as it is gross.

Finally, the gang get around to going after the money: Stadium employees are held at gunpoint, guards deliver the takings, and gang members stuff the cash in a large bag, then two of them don ambulance drivers’ white coats and haul the loot out – blanketed up like a body on a stretcher – under the noses of the paying public with the police clearing the way for them.

Trouble looms when its time for the gang to split the take.

The script for this gutsy crime thriller was based on a novel by Richard Stark, who also wrote Point Blank (1967). Director Gordon Flemyng also made the Dr Who movies.

McClain
Jim Brown
Ellie
Diahann Carroll
Gladys
Julie Harris
Bert Clinger
Ernest Borgnine
Lt Walter Brill
Gene Hackman
Harry Kifka
Jack Klugman
Marty Gough
Warren Oates
Herb Sutro
James Whitmore
Dave Negli
Donald Sutherland

Director
Gordon Flemyng