The League of Gentlemen (film)



The League of Gentlemen is a 1960 British crime drama directed by Basil Dearden and starring Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, and Richard Attenborough. It is based on the 1958 novel by John Boland.

Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, although civilian irritations do start getting in the way.

The film introduced a lot of the tropes now common to The Caper and the Impossible Mission.


 * Armed Blag: Discussed, but written off as too "dangerous and messy" compared to robbing the bank itself.
 * Avengers Assemble
 * Bavarian Fire Drill: The "surprise inspection" of the army base.
 * Camp Gay: Major Race. "One gets into terrible habits at the YMCA..."
 * The Caper
 * Con Man: Padre
 * False-Flag Operation: The gang speak in Irish accents so the IRA will get the blame for the army base heist.
 * Gas Mask Mooks
 * Just One Little Mistake: "That's what gave you away; your own car!"
 * Mildly Military: Invoked; Hyde thinks the best way to ensure military precision is to use ex-servicemen and insist on military discipline.
 * Model Planning
 * Permission to Speak Freely?
 * The Perfect Crime: Very nearly. All undone by Just One Little Mistake: a kid collecting license plate numbers.
 * Perp Walk: including The Reveal that they've already caught everyone else.
 * The Scrounger: Major Race.
 * Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The inspection. Averted with The Caper, which works despite being explained in full.