'The Robber' Trailer

We first started to get wind of The Robber, Austrian director Benjamin Heisenberg's account of the true story of a marathon runner who robs banks, when it hit a couple festivals last year. It was promptly snapped up by Sony for a possible remake, but in the meantime the well-received original is getting a limited release in the States. Check out a trailer below.

This is basically the same trailer that was cut for Germany, only with a few English-language changes. Still, it looks like it might be a thrilling little film. The source material is Martin Prinz's book Der Rauber, which was published in English as On the Run. and is described in detail as follows:

In the 1980s the bank-robber Johann Rettenberger was the most wanted criminal in Austria. Known as Pumpgun Ronnie because of the weapon he used and the Ronald Reagan mask he wore for his robberies, he sometimes robbed two or three banks on the same day. He was also wanted for one murder, unconnected with the bank robberies. Unusually for a bank-robber, he was also a keen amateur marathon runner and had won several races. He jumped out of a window during questioning and escaped by running into the Vienna Woods. It took four days and the biggest police operation in Austrian history before he was cornered and shot himself. On the Run is not an attempt to analyse or explain, much less excuse Rettenberger, nor is it a biographical novel recreating the details of his life in chronological order. It is a novel about a man for whom running is of existential importance. He only seems to feel truly alive, truly himself, truly free when he is running. Although it does have the forward drive of the excitement of the chase, from the perspective of the quarry, it is more of an Austrian The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner than a thriller.

Hit Apple to see the runnin' and stealin' in HD.

A champion marathoner leads a double life as a serial bank robber, sprinting between fixes (and away from police cavalcades) as many as three times a day. Based on the real-life story of Austria's most-wanted bank robber of the 1980s, Benjamin Heisenberg's thriller is a lean, visceral study of pathological compulsion, featuring a riveting central performance by Andreas Lust (REVANCHE).