Bellman and True – 1987 | 120 mins | Crime, Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Based on Desmond Lowden’s 1975 novel, Richard Loncraine’s consciously doom-laden and tortuously long Bellman & True is a low-budget crime film with distinct ambitions in the direction of stature. The first half of the film spends too long bogged down in an empty mansion dealing with the entrapment of reluctant computer expert Hiller, whilst the second half follows the meticulous planning and execution of the raid; and contains a pleasant mixture of humour and tension, topped by an exciting getaway with a memorably tight squeeze. The lugubrious Bernard Hill is grimly anxious as the reluctant pawn drawn into a big-time caper of increasing complexity during the Thatcherite 1980s.

An alcoholic computer expert, Hiller (Bernard Hill), has gotten himself involved with a young yuppie crook named Salto (Richard Hope). When Hiller’s wife walks out on him and his young stepson (Kieran O’Brien), he gets drunk and loses his banking job; before he cleans out his desk, he sells one of the bank’s “worthless” computer tapes to Salto. Once Hiller has spent his ill-gotten windfall he returns to London, but Salto’s henchmen kidnap his son and demand Hiller stay at their dilapidated city safe-house and decipher the bank computer tape.

They explain that they intend to rob the National General Bank and pressure is put on Hiller to hack into a bank’s security system and take out the alarms. The pressure is cranked up by the arrival of old-style Cockney gangster Guv’nor (Derek Newark), whose gunpoint threats are convincing enough to cause Hiller to participate on the night of the raid.