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.
Tropes used in The League of Gentlemen (film) include:
- 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.