A Matter of Choice

Don't watch this film for the sake of Anthony Steel, because he is almost put out at once. You keep hoping for his recovery, he is after all Anthony Steel and the only star attraction of the film, but he does nothing to earn it. He is just swept away by those circumstances, which no one can do anything about, since no one ever could about the force of circumstances. Here they are exposed to their maximum of perplexity of chance. No one is really guilty of anything of all that happens, and yet they all contribute to their fantastic machination, being all perfectly innocent victims of chance. The two boys get away with pure fright, they least of all wanted anything of this to happen, and yet only they caused this fantastic train of events which no one could stop or control. At first the film seems innocent and stupid enough, young boys do foolish things, but when once there is a traffic casualty no one can stop the avalanche of destiny, really the force of circumstances. It's a wonderful, fantastic, skilfully contrived maze of a film, where only the audience can understand the utter helplessness of the unfortunate actors and their most unintentional mess.

Like in Hitchcock 's "family plot" (1976) ,there are two apparently independent plots; the prologue sets the tone: life is a matter of choice,and is what happens when you are busy making other plans .Fate may challenge the probability

Two boys wandering ,one of them taking a girl home and trying to pick her up (the scene verges on parody ,the actors ,mainly the girl , are a little ludicrous) ; an unfaithful wife ,leaving for California on a business trip with her husband, much to her lover's displeasure .

An incident at a vending-machine will change all the characters' life as the two stories become one .The first part drags on a little, (the long scene in the boy's flat with the girl looks like a cartoon ,Tweetie Pie and Sylvester style),but from the incident (and the accident), there's no letup as the movie continues to build in suspense as many sudden new developments happen (some of them a bit implausible,why THAT garage?) .But the title tells it all :it's a matter of choice .And the story is gripping ,till its very last pictures .

If A MATTER OF CHOICE didn't rely on the titular melodramatic fateful inevitability premise, it would more smoothly summarize the British New Wave of the 1960's, liken to THE LONELINESS OF A LONG DISTANCE RUNNER had Tom Courtenay and James Bolam never been arrested since the best scenes involve two young men just hanging out...

Herein lifted from Leopold and Loeb-inspired ROPE and COMPULSION as these fellas seem more interested in each other than women... and their goal to find the perfect chick's more a dare than possible conquest...

Malcolm Gerald and Michael Davis play the flamboyant alpha and beta males going from a diner to their adjoined apartments to a swinging jazz club, before which our cocky alpha (resembling a wimpy version of Maximilian Schell) targets squeaky-voiced SMOKESCREEN starlet Penny Morrell...

Their scene in Gerald's modern art bachelor pad is a standout; leading to gorgeous blonde Marie Noël as a French waitress in a nightclub with that period's blaring-jazz, coinciding with composer Robert Sharples doing his best John Barry BEAT GIRL impression...

Then the inevitable MATTER that takes up the entire second half as the boys accidentally (fatefully) connect with thirty-something lovers Anthony Steel and Jeanne Moody: she's cheating on her old rich husband and he's a handsome square-jawed dreamer...

Resulting in an accident that wounds a cop (via the boys), an even more wounded Steel (also from the boys), and that cheating dame's inevitable Noirish Guilt Trip, that, dragging far too long, puts a damper on the freewheeling good times leading up: Making CHOICE a far better time-filler than crime thriller.

A MATTER OF CHOICE is an interesting piece of social drama mixed with more traditional crime and thriller aspects which viewers of British B-cinema will be used to. It's directed by the hard-working Vernon Sewell and tells an atypical story about a couple of skirt-chasing young men whose lives fatefully cross with those of an adulterous couple one night. The ponderous narration at the film's opening alerts us to the fact that this is a morality piece, exploring how a single trivial decision can lead unknowingly into disaster.

The problem with the film is that it's very slowly paced and the main plot elements don't occur until half the movie has elapsed. The viewer is saddled with the two youths for much of the running time and they don't make for much in the way of company, stuck in the same kind of superficial rut as the characters in THE DAMNED, BEAT GIRL, THE SYSTEM, and a dozen other similar works of social commentary released during the era.

The second half includes the police investigation and is more involved. There's a nice role for Ballard Berkeley, for once cast against type as a cuckolded husband. Anthony Steel (ALBERT, R. N.) does well as the adulterer too. The ending is solid, but doesn't feel of much consequence really, and the whole thing has dated somewhat since release. As such, A MATTER OF CHOICE is a mildly interesting curio, nothing more.

The IMDb need to revise their plot synopsis of this film as it reveals the ending, which is well worth waiting for.

Based on a story by the film's director and the actor Derren Nesbitt, who had recently worked together on 'The Man in the Back Seat' and 'Strongroom' and between them devised another engrossing account of escalating panic with a satisfyingly abrupt payoff at the conclusion; although the title and the opening narration that justifies it seem very much like last minute contrivances.

Like its predecessors it provides a vivid snapshot of life just after the Beatles' first LP (with London after dark full of men going home grumpy because all they'd got at the doorstep of the woman they'd just spent the evening lavishing what charm they could muster, along with their hard-earned money, was a quick "thank-you"). It's also crammed with fascinating period details like the nightclub which charges a whopping 5/- for admission - and the racial mixture of its clientele - and the malfunctioning sandwich machine which sets the whole final chain of events in motion.

Although top-billed, Anthony Steel is given very little to say or do...