The Safecracker

Ray Milland starred in and produced this film from 1958. He plays Colley Dawson, an expert safecracker who can open a safe by listening to the tumblers. While in prison, he is recruited by the British to break into a safe in Germany and photograph a list of their spies working in Britain.

What's odd about the film is that it starts out as one thing - a safecracker who is stealing things for a partner and getting a percentage - and then turns into more of a spy film.

Milland is way past it to be playing this part. Also, at least in the print I saw, the night scenes and dark house scenes were so dark it was hard to make out anything.

Just okay.

The safecracker is in the Army. He looks at the bed and complains about the thin mattress. The soldier asks him what did he sleep on before. Safecracker says, "on a double bed with a double mattress". Soldier says, "you must have been in the American Army". To the British, "Yanks are Over Sexed, Over Paid, and Over Here".

This was fairly entertaining, but odd. It is like three distinct movies - a crime film followed by a light comedy and closed out with a war picture. There are several plot points that were not well developed and that leave you filling in some gaps yourself - and not in the "I'm glad they didn't just spoon feed it to me" way, but in the "wait - what the heck just happened there?" way. The story was interesting enough but it all stayed pretty superficial. Wasn't a waste of time but won't watch it again.

It's 1938 London. Locksmith Colley Dawson (Ray Milland) demonstrates his safecracking skills to get a job designing a foolproof safe. He gets recruited by a crooked antiques dealer to break into a safe. Eventually, he gets caught and imprisoned. After the start of the war, he gets recruited by the military to steal a German spy list from a safe in occupied Belgium.

This is fine. I wouldn't spend that much time introducing Colley's descend into the criminal world. The movie could easily start with training at the military base. That's the meat of the story anyways. The training has some fun bits and dropping behind the lines has some good action. It has some good sneaking around but the scheme always has an unavoidable issue. The Nazis would always find out no matter how careful they are. The Nazis would assume that something was stolen and the list seems to be a high priority. I like a lot of this but much of the first half can be cut.

I am considerably more enthusiastic about this film than the majority of my fellow IMDBers below. Indeed, had the action scenes, especially the night time parachute drop and the climactic burglary, been better handled I would have assigned it a nine or a ten. I was especially taken with Milland's crisp, fast paced directorial style, unusual for an actor who decides to move behind the camera, where the scenes tend to favor the dramatic players rather than the drama. I also liked that this cheerfully cynical tale stayed true to itself and did not "redeem" Milland's title character in the name of English patriotism. Give it a B plus.