Customer Reviews
call me dutch - By: Paul Tapner, 20 Mar 2008 
a classic british comedy comes to dvd. the film is the tale of mister holland, a lowly bank clerk who comes to work each day in his suit & bowler hat, & fusses a lot about his job, which is transferring gold bullion to a bank. everyone thinks he's a dull little man with no imagination, but he's reallly got more than anyone expects, & has been planning for years to rob the bank & get away with the gold.
When he meets mister pendlebury, a souvenir trinket maker, he finallly has the last element of his plan. the two recruit a couple of crooks to help them, & the robbery of the century is go. but will they get away with it?
Depicting a long gone britain of the the early 50's, this is a fun gentle comedy. it's not laugh out loud for most of it but it's charming throughout, & it features a superb performance from alec guinness as holland, a little man with a big imagination. mind you the last fifteen minutes when things go awry & they have to improvise wildly to succeed are side splittingly funny, culminating in one of cinema's most memorable car chases ever.
the dvd has direct scene access & the original trailer for the movie.
A classic, & great to have it on dvd to enjoy again & again
A Lovely piece of typically British comedy - By: Mr. Derek R. Osbourne, 30 Dec 2007 
Alec Guiness & Stanley Holloway are superb & nice cameos by Alfie Bass & Sid James. There is something so Britishly domestic about the Ealing comedies & what great social histories they are too. In American movies of the wartime & post war period you would never had known there had been a war. In British comedies like the Lavender Hill Mob & Passport to Pimlico the bombsites, rationing & the plucky anti Hitler & anti authoritarian spirit are part of the background to the action.
This is the same gentle & British understatement that would give us Shirley Valentine, Educating Rita, Notting Hill & Bridget Jones' Diary. I wonder: Do Americans understand our comedy?
A gem of a movie - By: Andrew Hoffman, 18 Dec 2007 This is a classic of British cinema, a comedy to make you laugh out loud. Guiness is perfect.
One of Ealing's Finest - By: David Lusher, 21 Sep 2007 This film is one of the masterpieces of British Comedy. Alec Guinness & Stanley Holloway are an unlikely pair of "crooks". The inverted commas are there because neither the viewer nor the characters quite believe it themselves. The pair just want a bit of adventure & a taste of the high life. Guinness is brilliant as the timid bank clerk who despises the trust he is given because he knows he is seen by his superiors as too weak an individual to be a threat. That gives him the power to succeed in his daring plan. The catalyst is Stanley Holloway, a businessman with an eye for the main chance. However, he does not believe he can succeed until he meets Guinness, & Guinness does not believe that his little fantasy about robbing the bank can become a reality until he meets Holloway. When the pair meet up with a couple of real (but inept) crooks, the job is on! It's a wonderful cast & we like them so much that we hope they get away with it. It's a great story & highly entertaining. Everyone should have this in their DVD collection.
