Salaud

You have to live Burton camping it up as a psychotic mum loving gangster. It's all a bit small budget but if you stumble upon it you will enjoy it. It's quite violent in places as Burton is proper psych!!

British gangster films have always been with us, but in the case of this very rare and hardly ever shown on TV classic, VILLAIN was to be the real start of many vicious gangster films to follow. For some insane reason Richard Burton never got any real film awards for any films he did. His films were very varied indeed. And it probably came as a shock to many when he stepped into the role of vicious London crime boss Vic Dakin. It's a performance with such frightening menace, that you wonder why this film is not shown more on television. It is also not on DVD and videos of the movie are hard to find, or of a very high price sold by collectors who wish to make a profit on this very rare gem. People go on and on about Get Carter, another great film, and I agree on it also being a classic, but for me Villain is just as good. If you can watch this film and can get hold of a copy, I urge you to do so. You won't be disappointed.

Villain is a classic example of the English gangster genre which stretches from Brighton Rock, through Get Garter and the Long Good Friday, to Lock, Stock etc. Writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais have fashioned a kind of East-End version of White Heat with Burton in the mother-fixated Jimmy Cagney role.

Burton gives us his Ronnie Kray impersonation and clearly relishes the sly dialogue of the script. The support includes notable turns from Nigel Davenport, Donald Sinden, and an hilarious Joss Ackland as a would-be heavy with an upset tummy.

The action is well-handled and the settings convincingly grubby but it's the superb dialogue that repays repeated viewings.

This film may not be a classic but it is one of my favourite films of the early 1970s and is worth watching if only for the great cast. Richard Burton's portrayal as a vicious, homosexual mother-fixated, career-criminal psychopath is superb (the Kray twins had only recently been sentenced and comparisons can be drawn). It would have been easy to portray Vic Dakin-great villain name- as an American-style, one dimensional cardboard villain. Instead it is a study of intelligent evil. His character carries an air of menace made all the more frightening by his eloquence and intellect. The film has a good British cast (watch out for a scene-stealing Nigel Davenport as the police officer in charge), gritty 1970s locations and all the usual formula: the planning and execution of a robbery, torture scene, blackmail and even a hospital kidnap! What more could you ask from an old potboiler gangster film? Go on, watch the

film and make up your own mind. A strong British film and a must for fans of Richard Burton.

I've watched 'Villain' innumerable times since I taped it off a late night Channel 4 screening in 1999. Why? Because it's truly excellent.

Atmosphere, plot, quirky characterisations, violent action, dialogue, squalid sex - brother, it's got the lot. A far, far more interesting film than the same period's 'Get Carter'.

Scripted by venerable British comedy maestros Clement and Le Frenais from an initial novel adaptation by the simian faced American character actor Al Lettieri (and I'm sure there's an interesting story behind that process), 'Villain' is remarkably modern in its tone. We aren't presented with goodies or baddies, simply players of the never-ending game:

Vic Dakin (a darkly humorous Richard Burton) is the good old traditional mother-loving gay psychopath who enjoys slicing up informers with a cut-throat razor;

Wolfie Lissner (a superb Ian McShane, playing probably the most interesting character in the piece) is a survivor who'll do what ever it takes to survive, be it pimping unsuspecting lovelies to the elite, selling pills to late night ravers or taking the brunt of Dakin's sadisitic sexual urges;

Bob Matthews (a wry Nigel Davenport) is the disillusioned copper dedicated purely to bringing Daykin down - "I don't want a fertile imagination, I don't want to know if society's to blame, I just want to catch criminals".

And Gerald Draycott (an eternally eyebrow-cocking, seedily lecherous Donald Sinden) is a charmingly corrupt politician with a weakness for the kind of nubile young girls Wolfie supplies.

The script traces the intertwining fates of these characters after a bungled wages heist with terse, witty precision. Oddball subsidiary figures like Joss Ackland's ulcer-ridden crook (who gobbles pain-relieving hard boiled eggs during a getaway) and James Cossins' bitter, wife-hating clerk garnish the proceedings like tangily flavorous seasoning. The backdrop of grubby and grim seventies Britain is so well sketched that you can almost smell it. Jonathan Hodge's musical score is both percussively minimalist and hauntingly lyrical - very powerful. And its a rare triumph for the otherwise hack-like Michael Tuchner, who directs superlatively here with vigorous assurance.

Look out for stalwarts like Tony Selby, Tim Barlow and an uncredited Johnny Shannon ('Performance's Harry Flowers) as a copper coshing con.

"Got a hard-oh, have ya? DRIVE!!"