I’ve a nasty feeling Steve’s not going to approve of this one:

“In the film, former officers of the British Army plan a bank robbery in the City of London. They raid an army training camp in Dorset to get the weapons they need, and frame the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for the raid.”

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: 

“Given a slightly different approach, this film might have developed into an ironic study of the decline of the officer class in peacetime; a valid enough subject, especially when one considers the varying shifts in social status to be encountered in the post-war British scene.

Instead, the film concentrates on suspense rather than character investigation. Each of the Gentlemen is introduced by a little establishing scene, after which the script fails to develop their idiosyncracies and, in fact, weakens its own possibilities by making them all basically shady characters.

Bryan Forbes (as in his script for The Angry Silence (1960)) brings a lively surface edge to the dialogue, but tends to overdo the slick, ripe repartee as well as imposing on his characters a variety of fashionable perversions.

As a study of a certain strata of society, then, the film lacks a strong centre and a firm point of view – one is never quite sure how seriously the parody of the officer code is intended, especially in the ambiguous, obligatorily moral ending.

Judged as a thriller, it is more successful: the two big set-pieces (the army camp robbery and the raid itself) are quite skilfully put together, although the former suffers from an overdose of tired Army humour.

The handling of these scenes and the extensive location shooting suggest that, for Basil Dearden, the film’s interest (and challenge) was mainly a technical one….”

Actually, not just for Steve but for anyone English, this filum. Let’s see.

……

General word for chaps and chapesses suggesting films … I do look but sometimes the copy has some preventing aspect to it, either embedding or not available in countries our readers come from. Occasionally though, I do forget, sorry me, so feel free.

Contentwise, I really must avoid horror, guts, occult, that sort of thing … we do have quite a few genteel readers, you know the score. Plus I’m under contract to my Maker.