Honorables delincuentes

Jack Hawkins, excellent as always, heads a superb cast in this marvelously entertaining look at the moral decay of Britain's upper classes in the post-war period. Some of Britain's greatest film talent was at work on this project, including screenwriter Bryan Forbes, director Basil Dearden, and cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson. If you want to see the granddaddy of caper films, this is it. It's also your chance to see Oliver Reed playing a flaming queen: believe it or not!

This 1959 (or 1960) film shares the same title as the 1990's comedy about weird northern folk, but is a far more savage satire of decay in the establishment.

A redundant Colonel recruits a unit of marginally more corrupted subordinate Army officers, to stage an American Style heist, based on a US pulp fiction novel. Very few of the characters would initially be associated with the establishment. Their past failings include treason, war-crimes and negligence resulting in deaths.

Jack Hawkins (Colonel Hyde) knits the characters together over the course of the film. By reinventing a form of army discipline the characters appear to rediscover their aplomb.

The actual robbery is almost incidental, occupying ~ 10% of the film.

My real fascination was with the development and interaction of the characters. Even 40 years on their callousness is at times shocking and the 'Blame Ireland' example of scapegoating still resonates, especially in the context of the characters' personal failures in other theatres of the ex-empire.

The film is nearly 2 hours long, but seemed much shorter. Post war film of the City of London (and elsewhere) before 60s redevelopment is a bonus.

It's very strange, but within the caper film genre, there are TONS of wonderful films....tons. Movies like "Rififi", "Grand Slam" and "The Italian Job" are all top entertainment...and "The League of Gentlemen" follows in this same tradition.

The film begins with Hyde (Jack Hawkings) sending an invitation to seven men. When the men all arrive at this dinner party, Hawkins shocks them all by telling them their sordid military histories. All served dishonorably and all are rogues...just the sort you'd like to recruit for some illegal acts. In this case, they will commit a very daring daytime bank robbery, but this is much later in the film. In the meantime, they all move in together and behave much like a precise military unit. Next, they have another, smaller but very daring raid to do so they'll have the proper equipment for the big robbery. How all this works together so precisely is why the film is worth seeing. Very well written, directed and acted--this is rousing entertainment from start to finish. It also offers enough novelty to make it different enough from these other films.

By the way, an interesting notion is the character played by Kieron Moore. Though never explicitly stated, it sure is apparent he's supposed to be gay. And, speaking of this, look for a tiny role played by a young Oliver Reed--a very, very stereotypically gay role...VERY.

This movie is an involving, intriguing and ultimately poignant heist thriller. Since the advent of a comedy TV show which took it's name, the TV Guides have taken to describing this film as a 'comedy'. Obviously they've never watched it - the moral is, get your movie info from IMDB, not a rubbish newspaper or magazine TV Guide.

The movie's premise is good - a disenchanted ex-army officer dispairs of success on 'civvy street' so decides to organize his own squad of former soldiers and pull off a military operation with a difference - they will rob a bank. This film was the inspiration to the real-life Great Train Robbery, which involved a 20-man gang stealing £3,500,000 in 1963.

Characterization is good and believable; as with all British movies of the era, there is an excrutiating tendency to overly-ingenious rhetoric, one wonders sometimes how they think of such witty remarks. That aside, it's thoroughly convincing. The film code of the day of course required that no film could ever show a criminal benefiting from his crime, but instead of the usual tiresome accidental spilling of the booty out of a train/car/plane window, we have a more realistic, and indeed somewhat sad resolution.

Yes, it is a bit old now, but if you can hang-up your hang-ups about that, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Well ... if your name is "Half Colonel" Hyde, you thank Her Majesty very much, and take your future into your own hands!

Hyde, played to gruff perfection by Jack Hawkins, is supremely proud of his meticulous planning skills, gained and sharpened in a 25 year military career. Ignominiously pensioned off, he puts these strengths to good use in plotting a daring million-pound robbery.

As an ex-military man, Hyde is aware that his "operation" cannot succeed without putting together a squad of the very best experts. Displaying the kind of guile and ruthlessness that earned him his lofty rank, he also knows that it's rather handy if one's selected team has nothing much to lose.

The film opens by introducing us to Hyde's hand-picked candidates in turn - each receiving a mysterious invitation to lunch, stapled to one half of a crisp new fiver none of them can afford to ignore. A rum bunch they are, too - we witness a splendidly gloomy panorama of post- war London, scattered with promiscuous wives, doomed businesses, loveless marriages and good times going rapidly bad.

Enough, surely, to make a fellow wish he were back in the army - especially should he happen to be a bogus clergyman, an "odd man out" or simply a chap who always makes the same mistake twice ...

Was late-1950s Britain, in fact, a land fit for heroes? Does pride come before a fall? Or might crime, perhaps just this once, pay?

Join these esteemed Gentlemen for a wonderfully enjoyable caper movie, and find out for yourself! The story entertains (and possibly even informs) throughout - particularly to be relished is the interplay between Hawkins and the always-watchable Nigel "Old Darling" Patrick.

Notwithstanding a youthful Oliver Reed's jarringly unfunny cameo, this is easily one of my top ten movies.

May we be spared for ever the Hollywood or - even worse - the BritPack re-make!!