While The Grinch is the most famous example, from Hans Gruber to Willie Soke each year we return to stories of characters trying to steal Christmas. Amongst shopping busyness or ‘Closed for Christmas’ signs the season seems to be an ideal time to pull off a heist, or upfront robbery. So, this year’s Alternative Christmas Film Advent Calendar looks at a series of less-mentioned attempts at festive thefts.
When robbing a bank at Christmas what disguise are you going to go for? Of course, Santa seems like the most tongue-in-cheek option. And it’s just that which Christopher Plummer goes for when holding up the bank that Elliott Gould’s Miles Cullen works at. Having ditched the ‘give to charity’ sign he was walking around the mall with moments before he’s switched to a gun and scribbled-on bank notes with demands to empty all the cash in the till and hand it over to him.
However, after having pieced together the possible robbery from a mislaid note not long before Miles has been storing the till cash elsewhere, although not mentioning this to anyone. After seeing a report of just how much was stolen Plummer’s Harry Reikle tracks Miles down, threatening to frame him as involved in the robbery – a silent partner. A worried feud starts to quietly play out between the two, almost as if seeing who will get arrested first and spend Christmas Day in a jail cell, with the hope of avoiding that fate themselves.
Christmas is very quickly pushed to the back of Miles’ mind as his fear of being implicated, and followed by Reikle, grows. The only thing it means for him is that the bank is almost at its busiest time of year, meaning more money was stolen and his sentence, if things aren’t dealt with, could be worse than it already is for someone who’s innocent.
Plummer’s character lies in the background of each scene for Gould, especially as he threatens revenge with threatening notes from unknown locations – like the dollar note he found on the day of the robbery where he was threatened by Santa. A ruined Christmas and number of months after play out in the wake of those events, darkly haunting Miles as he finds himself unable to move on while the threat still hangs over him. Perhaps not quite what Slade meant when they sang “look to the future now, it’s only just begun!”
To see where you can buy, rent or stream The Silent Partner, if you don’t have a physical copy lying around anywhere, JustWatch should be able to tell you where you can find it in whichever country you find yourself in.
Just A Little Bit Random 