User Reviews

There isn't a lot of action in this crime film, but it still has no trouble holding your attention. It's also unusual to be a modern tough-guy film like this with so little profanity, including the Lord's name in vain, atlhough I didn't know it was a TV-movie until I posted this review. However, there is a common Catholic-bashing as it showed not once but three times - to make sure you get the point - the gang leader (John Mahoney) as a church-goer. In one scene, he is praying the rosary while they show nothing but violent scenes. That's an old association trick that was effectively portrayed in the Godfather films of the early '70s.

Nonetheless, if's a pretty inoffensive movie overall and a good character study of some of the people involved in real-life crime.

It was a shock at the end when almost all the thieves were killed by the mob hierarchy, including the informant. I don't understand how the gang leader escaped that, unless it was his association with the longtime mob boss that spared him.

The story of the 1978 Lufthansa robbery, when an airport employee who has stolen money and owes many thousands in gambling debts is about to be killed by a mob boss managed to save his life by telling him about how Lufthansa airlines sends millions of dollars in cash during certain flights. The boss then organizes a criminal gang, the idea that they would use two vans to pick up the millions of dollars from the airport warehouse.

But things go wrong from the beginning. Only one van shows up, with the take being less than hoped for. Worse yet, the van is found when the person responsible for destroying it has failed to do so. Then the boss decides the robbers have to be silenced for good, especially as one person snitches...

The movie does not spring for action, but the tension is there as we learn of the various gang members being wiped out. The moral is clear. Crime really is too risky.