Offbeat

"To play this game", says one veteran criminal to a new recruit, "you need a cool head and an eye for angles." The same advice could apply to the art of filmmaking as well, and here's a good case in point: what could have been a routine British thriller, but with more style and intelligence than otherwise might be expected from such a familiar scenario. The new recruit is actually a spy hired by Scotland Yard to infiltrate an underground crime network, where he discovers during an elaborate jewelry heist more honor among the ring of thieves than among his fellow law enforcers. Aside from the ambiguous ending and a sometimes too relentless big city jazz score, this is first-class escapist entertainment with more than one trick up its sleeve.

...Note: the film was titled 'Offbeat' at the rare theatrical screening I attended, on the Berkeley campus way back in 1986...

When they are digging the hole in the street in the City of London, Harry Baird, playing Gill, calls Leo Farrel 'Neil', which is the actor's name (Neil McCarthy) instead of Leo, or Binky, the name of the character.

'Downbeat' would have been a more appropriate tile for this poor man's 'Asphalt Jungle' told in flashback so we already know the ultimate fate of the hero.

Slickly made with a capable cast and lots of cynical one-liners like "Better not work too hard or someone will get suspicious!", it's one drawback is an annoying score by Ken Jones.

Director Cliff Owen's brisk 60s crime caper demonstratively remains an exciting, palm-sweatingly dynamic underworld thriller exposing the inherent risks of Scotland Yard's cavalier methodology to thwart the increasingly audacious criminal elements lurking within the UK's labyrinthine metropolis. Steve Ross (William Sylvester) is an ice-pick cool undercover agent, and after successfully infiltrating an established firm, Steve very soon finds himself dangerously embroiled in an especially audacious jewel heist which ultimately prompts him to realign his allegiances to his own financial, if not moral advantage! The robbery itself is beautifully conceived, energetically orchestrated by gifted film-maker Owen, in fact the film's stylistic influence on contemporary Brit-crime thrillers is quite obvious. 'Offbeat' has an unusually robust text, winningly vivid performances from a talented cast, including another luminous turn from the always delightful Mia Zetterling, and maestro Ken Jones's exemplary jazz score provides an exhilarating backbeat to the palpably tense, increasingly white-hot intensity of the gang's subterranean larceny! 'Offbeat' is a hard-hitting, finely-honed Brit-crime classic that forcefully maintains its sinewy grip right until its legitimately thrilling climax. Fans of cult British cinema might care to know that journeyman director Cliff Owen also directed the amiable farce 'No Sex Please We're British!' (1973)

There was a reason America- born actor William Sylvester was available for an American director who only filmed in Europe and lived in England since both Sylvester and Stanley Kubrick ala 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY were British staples: In fact the former was in as many British b-movies as any English-born b-movie actor...

Some good, others okay, OFFBEAT aka THE DEVIL INSIDE provides the usually smug, deliberately cool/calm performer real edge and intensity, starting out wearing dark sunglasses while robbing a bank... then meeting with fellow cops for whom he's an undercover agent...

OFFBEAT takes place mostly during one heist, and it's a tunnel job on a quiet city street...

Sylvester's job is to infiltrate a syndicate of big-time thieves; yet this den is full of working-class types so crooked they're almost normal, including by-the-numbers leader Anthony Dawson and affable John Meillon, who, along with some muscle, pose as construction workers.

But it's the gang's token ingenue Mai Zetterling that matters, lovely and tough despite falling too hard too fast for our anti-hero, constantly dogged by his Scotland Yard boss... which, as he and we learn, could be for understandable reasons, and is thus Sylvester's best crime-flick role, juggling a kind of criminal/cop ambiguity like only a good Noir can.