Second of the trilogy, We Still Steal the Old Way arrived two years after 2014’s We Still Kill the Old Way and three years before We Still Die the Old Way. Aged gangsters is the idea. Geezer gangsters, this being a London-set caper. If you watched the first movie, you might have been amused to discover that the guys in question are meant to be the team behind the Italian Job back in the 1960s. That would make them very old, wouldn’t it?
Ian Ogilvy is back as Richie Archer, the gang leader who’s a cross between a lovable old rogue and a nasty piece of work, this time deliberately getting himself nabbed robbing a bank so he can wind up inside prison to help old gang member George (Patrick Bergin) break out. This is a humanitarian mission. George’s wife is dying and Richie and co want him to be able to visit her one last time. But Richie hasn’t reckoned on Vic Farrow (Billy Murray), a swivel-eyed nut with a grudge to settle, who engineers a transfer to Richie’s prison by anally raping a fellow inmate with a broom handle. That’s the sort of guy Vic is.
If you only know Ogilvy as the youthful co-star of three films by cult director Michael Reeves – Revenge of the Blood Beast, The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General (he was in a couple of Reeves shorts too) – or as Roger Moore’s replacement in TV show The Saint (still showing on a TV near you), then he’ll be a revelation here. He’s a surprisingly good hardman, albeit one with a love of the deadpan putdown, and he is a plausible presence as a gang leader, though Richie is obviously now knocking on a bit (Ogilvy is about 73 here). Cracking safes and breaking out of jail “plays havoc with my back and knees,” he says.
That’s the plot – spring George from prison, without getting murdered by Vic. Simple enough, and it is a simple enough film, straightforward in its depiction of prison life as unpleasant at best, brutal at worst.
Behind it all a trio of familiar ideas. That there is honour among thieves – Richie is loyal to his gang and they are loyal to him. That the world was a better and safer place – the world here being London – when the gangs ran things. And that old guys can still show young whippersnappers a thing or two and what they lack in youthful snap they make up with guile.
For British viewers this is largely a walk down memory lane with a lot of faces familiar from TV soaps. The actors have an easy familiarity, and the chumminess is infectious. Director Sacha Bennett probably relies on the warmth excessively, hanging out with the guys too much in scenes that flap about a bit. But the actors pull him through. Tony Denham and Christopher Ellison are dead-on as Richie’s reliable right-hand men. Murray (familiar from The Bill and EastEnders on TV) is a scary Vic, a good foil for the almost avuncular Ogilvy, and Vas Blackwood is impressive in a small role as the sort of cultured psychopath you wouldn’t want as a cellmate.
There’s not much for the ladies here, though Lysette Anthony and Deborah (daughter of Roger) Moore have a nice duet as a pair of molls who cordially detest each other, and Tanya Franks makes a mark as a prison governor who’s as bent as they come.
From the bare-bones IMDb entry on We Still Die the Old Way (directed by Bennett but no longer starring Ogilvy), it looks like the women get more to do in the follow-up movie. As things stand there are only four actors listed, three of them female. It’s got to be worth a look, if it can be found, that is.
We Still Steal the Old Way – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
