Working in Europe, and now under his own name, BlackListed U.S. director Joseph Losey had one more pulpy effort in him before moving to art house films via scripts from Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Mozart, et al. It's this tough crime drama split between Inside Prison Actioner and Outside Mob Caper. Stanley Baker (The Man Who Would Be Sean Connery . . . if there hadn’t been a Sean Connery) is at the end of a three-year stint with plans for a Race Track Heist once he gets out. But first, an old score to settle with a new inmate before his release and hook up with well-connected mob man Sam Wanamaker (also BlackListed in the U.S.) to set the track robbery in motion. All goes well . . . at first. But Baker has a plan for that, too, a devilishly good one. Working with film noir D.P. Robert (THIRD MAN) Krasker, Losey shows more interest working inside prison than out. Gates, corridors, violent-tinged assemblies, twisty staircases, cages: a threatening muscular world well matched to inmates in their spiffy, well-tended, prison outfits, little wool uniforms with tapered white shirts & skinny black ties. The guards should be as well turned out. A shame it’s 1960 and the ending has to be a downbeat fait accompli since even not-so-bad guys couldn’t get away with something like this at the time. Instead, the expected nihilistic ending, though neatly handled. Something definitely lost when Losey stopped making genre pics.
DOUBLE-BILL: Pre-exile, Losey is at his best mixing suspense and social commentary in his early, undervalued Southern Border Thriller THE LAWLESS/’50.
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