{ "id": "epzmvckfjk", "slug": "the-olsen-gangs-big-score", "title": "The Olsen Gang's Big Score", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": 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"api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.franchise-series", "label": "Franchise and series entries as standalone works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.weu.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.franchise-series" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Olsen Gang's Big Score (Olsen-bandens store kup, 1972) is the fourth Danish Olsen-banden comedy, directed by Erik Balling, written with Henning Bahs, 1h39min, IMDb 6.7.", "snippet": "The Olsen Gang's Big Score (Olsen-bandens store kup, 1972) is the fourth Danish Olsen-banden comedy, directed by Erik Balling, written with Henning Bahs, 1h39min, IMDb 6.7.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.franchise-series.franchise-series.action-thriller-series-entries.entries-released-1960s-and-1970s", "markdown": "# The Olsen Gang's Big Score\n\n**The Olsen Gang's Big Score** (Danish: *Olsen-bandens store kup*) is a 1972 Danish comedy heist film, the fourth entry in the Olsen-banden series about the bumbling criminal trio Egon Olsen, Benny, and Kjeld.[1](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena) It was produced in Denmark by Nordisk Film as part of the run of thirteen [Olsen Gang](https://www.edgepedia.org/olsen-gang) comedies released in Danish cinemas between 1968 and 1981.[2](https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/bkki/struktura/sc/sc-naujienos?id=6578&view=article)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Original title | *Olsen-bandens store kup* (1972), Denmark[1](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena) |\n| Position in series | Fourth film in the Olsen Gang cycle[1](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena) |\n| Runtime | 1 hour 39 minutes[1](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena) |\n| Audience rating | 6.7/10 on IMDb from about 2,100 user votes[1](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena) |\n| Director | Erik Balling (1924–2005), creator of the Olsen Gang[3](https://www.nordische-filmtage.de/97/filmprogramm/olsen/laeuft_amok.html) |\n| Screenwriters | Erik Balling and Henning Bahs, the series' regular writing team[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/) |\n| Series span | Thirteen films 1968–1981, plus a fourteenth in 1998[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nCopenhagen, 1972. Egon Olsen (Ove Sprogøe) is released from Vridsløselille prison and met at the gate by his crew: Benny Frandsen (Morten Grunwald), the cheerful driver and fixer, and Kjeld Jensen (Poul Bundgaard), the nervous family man who would rather be home for dinner. Cigar in mouth, Egon announces the plan. A money transport carrying more than four million kroner in collected tax money crosses the city on a fixed route, and the gang is going to take it.\n\nThe preparations are classic Olsen Gang. The three convene in Kjeld's basement, where Kjeld's wife Yvonne (Kirsten Walther) does her considerable best to keep her husband away from Egon's schemes, since every previous one has ended with Kjeld nearly arrested and Egon back behind bars. Egon lays out the robbery with the precision of a man who has read every book on crime ever written, and the gang, grumbling, falls in line.\n\n**The money transport robbery is the film's centerpiece, staged as a piece of clockwork comedy.** The gang executes the holdup on the open road, and for once everything works: the transport is stopped, the guards are neutralized without a shot fired, and the suitcase with the four million is in Egon's hands. It is the rare Olsen Gang sequence where Egon's genius is briefly vindicated, and the film lets the trio enjoy it. The problem is what comes after, because the gang must now lie low with a suitcase full of marked tax money in a city full of people who know exactly what they have been up to.\n\nThey hide the loot inside a public fountain, sealed and sunk where no one would ever look. Millions of kroner rest quietly under the water of an ordinary Copenhagen fountain while the gang strolls around town trying to look inconspicuous. Naturally, it does not stay hidden. The rival professionals Kongen (Asbjørn Andersen) and Knægten (Poul Reichhardt), an elegant older duo operating on an entirely different level of polish, have been watching, and they simply steal the suitcase out from under the gang. Egon plans the perfect crime, executes the perfect crime, and then loses the proceeds to two men in good suits who did none of the work.\n\nKongen and Knægten immediately start living large, checking into the penthouse suite at the Sheraton and spending like the tax money is theirs.[11](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/15498-olsen-bandens-store-kup) The second half becomes a battle over the suitcase, which changes hands again and again as the two gangs scheme, tail, and double-cross each other across hotels, basements, and city streets. The Olsen Gang tries to reclaim what was rightfully stolen by them first, and every attempt dissolves into farce.\n\nThe final twist is the cruelest joke of all. Just as the tug of war over the money reaches its end, Knægten's sister (Annika Persson) takes the suitcase and runs off with the entire four million, leaving both gangs empty-handed.[11](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/15498-olsen-bandens-store-kup) The professionals are ruined by their own family, the amateurs never touched their prize for more than a few hours, and the only person who profits is a young woman who did no work at all. The gang is left where the series always leaves them: broke, uncaught, and already listening to Egon explain that next time, the plan cannot fail.\n\n### Characters\n\nEgon Olsen (Ove Sprogøe) is the mastermind, a career criminal whose belief in his own intellect survives any amount of evidence against it. He speaks in plans, treats prison as a planning retreat, and is the only man in Denmark who can make four million kroner in stolen taxes sound like a modest, sensible target.\n\nBenny Frandsen (Morten Grunwald) is the gang's driver and muscle, an optimist with a taste for fast cars and easy money. He believes in Egon the way other men believe in the weather: completely, and without asking why.\n\nKjeld Jensen (Poul Bundgaard) is the reluctant one, a family man whose dream of a big score is forever at war with his fear of his wife. He provides the basement headquarters and most of the panic.\n\nYvonne Jensen (Kirsten Walther) is Kjeld's formidable wife, forever trying to drag her husband out of the criminal life and into a respectable dinner.\n\nKongen (Asbjørn Andersen) and Knægten (Poul Reichhardt) are the rival gang, polished professionals who appear in the series only in this film, living at the top of the Sheraton on money they did not steal. Kongen's daughter (Annika Persson) delivers the ending's punchline.\n\n### Interpretations and controversies\n\nThe ending has long divided fans. Many find it unsatisfying that the loot goes to Kongen's daughter, a character who did nothing to earn it, and the scene also contains the only nudity in the entire fourteen-film series.[12](https://www.flicksmore.com/movie/vid-10528512-the-olsen-gang-s-big-score.html) There are also fan rumors that Kongen and Knægten were intended to return in later films but were dropped when the actors demanded too much money.[13](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-olsen-gangs-big-score/)\n\n### Sequels, prequels, and universe\n\nThis is the fourth of the Olsen Gang films, and the only one ever adapted as a comic strip, drawn by Otto Frello in 1977. A Norwegian remake followed in 1974 under the title *Olsen-banden møter kongen og knekten*.[14](https://www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/olsen-bandens-store-kup)\n\n## Place in the series\n\nThe Olsen Gang series began in 1968 and, though never planned as a series, ran to twelve sequels by 1981 and a thirteenth, final film in 1998.[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/) *Olsen-bandens store kup* appeared in 1972 as the fourth installment, one year before its successor *Olsen-banden går amok*.[1](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena) • [5](https://ww.arslonga.dk/OLSEN_BANDEN.htm) A shooting script for the 1972 film is preserved in the Erik Balling special collection of the Danish Film Institute.[6](https://www.dfi.dk/files/docs/2018-02/Erik_Balling_S%C3%A6rsamling.pdf)\n\nThe films follow a fixed formula. As one scholarly account puts it, the plot of all fourteen episodes never changed: the gang attempts a large-scale robbery according to a plan devised by Egon Olsen, and the scheme collapses.[7](https://www.sdu.dk/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/Skrivekunst_aaben/~/media/F575819E3E61483FA5273AEE3B828137.ashx) In early drafts of the series the three leads were named Eigil, Sofus, and Tykke, and the project carried the working title \"Perlemorderne\" (The Pearl Murderers), because unrealized early ideas centered on jewel thefts.[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/)\n\n## Signature elements\n\n**The Franz Jäger safe.** A recurring prop in the series is the German Franz Jäger brand safe that Egon, an expert at cracking safes, sets out to break into.[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/) The brand was an invention of the screenwriter Henning Bahs; since 2014 the Danish manufacturer Herning Pengeskabsfabrik has produced real safes under the Franz Jäger name.[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/)\n\n**The house by the runway.** One scene from *Olsen Bandens Store Kup* is singled out in scholarship on home and national belonging in the series: to escape the police and rival criminals, the gang takes a temporary house close to the airport. While they are away, their regular home is vandalized, and the house by the runway eventually falls apart in the powerful turbulence from a passing aircraft.[7](https://www.sdu.dk/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/Skrivekunst_aaben/~/media/F575819E3E61483FA5273AEE3B828137.ashx)\n\n## The series' creator and reception\n\nErik Balling (1924–2005) directed the film and is regarded as one of the most prominent Danish film directors of the twentieth century; his Olsen Gang comedies are credited with portraying Denmark's transition from a post-war provincial country to a modern one.[3](https://www.nordische-filmtage.de/97/filmprogramm/olsen/laeuft_amok.html) • [2](https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/bkki/struktura/sc/sc-naujienos?id=6578&view=article) The series as a whole is considered an integral part of Danish collective memory, immortalized in street names, commemorative stamps, and slang, and it found a large audience abroad, especially in the former [Eastern Bloc](https://www.edgepedia.org/eastern-bloc), where East German audiences responded to the films' suspicion of national authorities, international financial capital, and the EEC.[8](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461122.003.0010)\n\nThe Danish originals also spawned foreign versions. Norwegian Olsenbanden films were produced in parallel through the 1970s, and these versions closely followed the Danish originals story-wise.[9](https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780748693191_A26549274/preview-9780748693191_A26549274.pdf)\n\n## Legacy\n\nThe series' closing device ties back to its origins: in the last film of the series, the adult Børge runs off with Egon's unrealized plans, and the top plan in the stack concerns the English crown jewels, a fitting end for a series once pitched around jewel thefts under the name \"Perlemorderne\".[4](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/) A dedicated Olsen Gang fan club remained active in Germany decades after the thirteenth and final film opened.[10](https://www.filmcentralen.dk/sites/default/files/docs/2018-02/FILM50%20%281%29.pdf)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Wielki skok gangu Olsena (Olsen-bandens store kup, 1972), JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/pl/film/wielki-skok-gangu-olsena)\n2. [Tamaševičius, Giedrius (Vilnius University): What do Olsen-banden films tell us about the Danish society?](https://www.flf.vu.lt/institutai/bkki/struktura/sc/sc-naujienos?id=6578&view=article)\n3. [Nordische Filmtage Lübeck: Olsen-Bande läuft Amok film program (Erik Balling biography note)](https://www.nordische-filmtage.de/97/filmprogramm/olsen/laeuft_amok.html)\n4. [Petersen, Brian: Review of Christian Monggaard, Olsen Banden, Filmmagasinet Ekko (2018)](https://www.ekkofilm.dk/anmeldelser/olsen-banden/)\n5. [Ars Longa: Olsen Banden filmography](https://ww.arslonga.dk/OLSEN_BANDEN.htm)\n6. [Registrant over Erik Balling samling, Danish Film Institute](https://www.dfi.dk/files/docs/2018-02/Erik_Balling_S%C3%A6rsamling.pdf)\n7. [Olsen Banden af Rune, University of Southern Denmark](https://www.sdu.dk/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/Skrivekunst_aaben/~/media/F575819E3E61483FA5273AEE3B828137.ashx)\n8. [Schröder, Stephan Michael: The Olsen Gang in Denmark – and Abroad, in A History of Danish Cinema, Edinburgh University Press (2021)](https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461122.003.0010)\n9. [Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Cultures, Edinburgh University Press (preview)](https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780748693191_A26549274/preview-9780748693191_A26549274.pdf)\n10. [FILM#50, Filmcentralen: The Olsen Gang in Germany](https://www.filmcentralen.dk/sites/default/files/docs/2018-02/FILM50%20%281%29.pdf)\n11. [https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/15498-olsen-bandens-store-kup](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/15498-olsen-bandens-store-kup)\n12. [https://www.flicksmore.com/movie/vid-10528512-the-olsen-gang-s-big-score.html](https://www.flicksmore.com/movie/vid-10528512-the-olsen-gang-s-big-score.html)\n13. [https://letterboxd.com/film/the-olsen-gangs-big-score/](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-olsen-gangs-big-score/)\n14. [https://www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/olsen-bandens-store-kup](https://www.dfi.dk/en/viden-om-film/filmdatabasen/film/olsen-bandens-store-kup)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released 1960s and 1970s*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Olsen Gang's Big Score\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Olsen Gang's Big Score](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Olsen Gang's Big Score\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-olsen-gangs-big-score. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Olsen Gang's Big Score is the fourth Danish Olsen-banden comedy, directed by Erik Balling, written with Henning Bahs, 1h39min, IMDb 6.7." }