Spaniard Francisco Rovira Beleta’s El expreso de Andalucía (US: Andalusia Express) is a tidily paced crime film that connects three distinctly drawn characters with different motivations for participating in a jewelry heist on a train headed to Seville. The unholy trinity comprises sensitive college student Miguel Hernández (Vicente Parra), street vendor El Rubio (Ignazio Bálsamo) who is first to learn the stolen jewels are on board, and former jai alai player Jorge Andrade (Jorge Mistral), a risk-taking ladies’ man who ends up killing one of the train operators and seducing the mistress (Mara Berni) of the intended fence, antiques dealer Salinas (Carlos Casaravilla). Marisa de Leza plays Lola, the sweet girl in love with Andrade, who will come to appreciate her too late. When not taking place aboard a train, the action unfolds across the city of Madrid, Rovira Beleta using rail yards, ditches, markets, and bridges to depict the very slow industrialization of Franco-clenched Spain. The film is rich with high-tension, high-gloss scenes, such as the theft and deaths on board the Express, Silvia’s break-in to Salinas’s safe, and the gorgeous closing sequence featuring a shootout and its aftermath in a dark, Spanish alley. The film is the strongest work in a loose trilogy of Rovira Beleta films exploring the darker elements of Barcelona, which also includes Hay un camino a la derecha (1953) and Los atracadores (1962).