The Criminal [Concrete Jungle] **** (1960, Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Patrick Magee, Grégoire Aslan) – Classic Movie Review 5843

Director Joseph Losey’ s dark 1960 British New Wave film-noir-style thriller takes a thoroughly engrossing Expressionist look at the UK criminal world of the day.

Stanley Baker is on fine form as Johnny Bannion, the imprisoned villain waiting to escape to retrieve his buried race-track robbery swag. Caught between a sadistic prison chief Barrows (Patrick Magee) and an underworld boss Mike Carter (Sam Wanamaker), he realises that his only escape is through violence.

Written by Alun Owen from a story by Jimmy Sangster, it is a gripping, hard-edged tale in a movie whose effect has not been blunted by the passing of so much time, thanks to the incisive performances, a subversive subject, Robert Krasker’s black and white images and Losey’s eagle-eyed gaze at British idiosyncrasies.

It runs 97 minutes but the US cut version re-titled The Concrete Jungle runs 86 minutes.

Also in the lovely old cast are Margit Saad, Noel Willman, Grégoire Aslan, Jill Bennett, Kenneth J Warren, Nigel Green, Patrick Wymark, Murray Melvin, Laurence Naismith, Rupert Davies, Edward Judd, John Van Eyssen,  Robert Adams, Kenneth Cope, Redmond Phillips and Derek Francis – every one special, every one a winner.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5843

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