Detektiv wider Willen

A serviceable Children's Film Foundation adventure that feels like a children's version of '80s classic DIE HARD. This one has a trio of kids locked in a department store at the weekend with a gang of bank robbers, but the action soon shifts to a half-built tower block where a battle of wits between adults and kids develops. And it's a fun little movie in which the bad guys are more threatening and less silly than usual. I was expecting much of the action to be studio set, but there are some alarming high rise stunts involving the kids and plenty of heroics, alongside cameoing adults Norman Rossington, James Villiers and Gordon Jackson.

Only the second review which probably indicates that it's not been on TV for some time until shown recently on TPTV.

A very different location for a CFF film as they are usually country affairs with cottages with roses around the front door and often with a dog involved.

The city setting was a nice change and I thought that the CFF tradition of at least one baddie getting wet was going to be missing but..........it was not missing, hurrah!

Not to be missed by CFF film fans and a good watch even for non CFF fans as all of the child actors were very good, sometimes one of a cast may not be as good as the others but not this time.

This time around the Childrens Film Foundation come closer to home by setting their latest adventure in London's West End were a gang of crooks are breaking into a bank from the basement of a branch of British Home Stores.

These particular baddies are rather more serious than usual, employing high-tech devices like power drills and walkie-talkies; although (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) that doesn't spare their boss the humiliation of getting doused with a hose-pipe.

Many of the team that made it were Ealing veterans like director Michael Truman, composer Tristan Carey (who combines a jazz piano & clarinet score with occasional avant garde electronic elements) and cameraman Geoffrey Faithful (who makes good use of the visual possibilities of a half-built building of the kind that London was then currently awash with).

Among the usual familiar faces the biggest surprise is a fleeting glimpse of the tragic Janet Munro.