Plunder Road

There’s a small group of “trucker noirs” that includes, among others, They Drive By Night (1940), Thieves’ Highway (1949), The Mistress (1952), and this one, Hubert Cornfield’s Plunder Road, a no-frills, straightforward story of five robbers who pull off the theft of a lifetime, stealing a massive supply of gold bars from a U.S. Mint train and transferring it onto Mack trucks in the middle of a downpour. The film’s first eleven minutes are free of dialogue until “Let’s go!” is uttered by Skeets, played by the inimitable Elisha Cook Jr., one of the most recognized faces in all of noir. Most of the film follows the three trucks as they split up to evade a national police hunt on their way home to Los Angeles, tension mounting with each gas stop, roadblock, and weighing station. Highlights include the forced killing of a kind old man recounting life lessons while pumping their gas and a mysterious phone call to a stylishly dressed woman who proceeds wordlessly to leave her office, travel to an out-of-the-way foundry, and expertly light an enormous smelting furnace in preparation for the boys’ return.