Fuggiasco

"Odd Man Out" is far more than just a very good "cops and robbers" movie, although it can hold its own with most. Beneath that is a deep psychological drama as Johnny McQueen, an IRA rebel, wounded in a holdup, is pursued by police, his own gang, and several unsavory characters. McQueen becomes less of a man and more symbol to his hunters. He is viewed as a martyr, meal ticket, and art project. Robert Newton is excellent in his role as a half-mad artist who wants to hold Johnny just long enough to paint the expression in the eyes of a dying man. Intensely suspenseful, set in the working-class neighborhoods and slums, the gray atmosphere compliments the plot perfectly. One of James Mason's finest.

Escaped from jail and sick of the violence, Johnny still is the head of the IRA and arranges a robbery on the mill. When he gets into a fight on the escape, Johnny is shot and kills a man. Half in and half out of the getaway car, Johnny falls out into the street and gets away before his comrades can collect him. Lost in the streets of Belfast, Johnny lurches from one safe-house to another while both friend and foe try to find him before the other.

While this film does feature an `organisation' that bares more than a passing resemblance to the IRA of the time and it is set in a town in Northern Ireland (unnamed in the film, but Belfast in reality) but this is not a film that is about the troubles per se; in fact it is surprising in just how non-partisan it manages to be throughout. The film goes the usual route of having the main IRA-character being either `too crazy for the IRA' or `too good for the IRA', the latter being the case here; however despite this it isn't anti-British or pro-IRA, in fact it is more about the characters and the dark landscape than about the politics.

Reed uses the same skills as he later would bring to the classic The Third Man - the dazzlingly dark streets, the imaginative shots and the photography. The actual plot is a little thin if you read the summary, however what it does do well is tell a tale of a man adrift among roughs and friends until true love is his release and redemption. For this reason, Mason actually doesn't have that much acting to do. He is quite understated in comparison to the lively and colourful support characters. His accent is way off for Northern Ireland; he tries a Southern accent but still his distinctive voice shines through. He gives a good performance but is surprisingly in the background for a leading man.

The support cast is better and is where the story really happens - in the hearts of the `normal' man. They have much better accents and characters and mannerisms that will be familiar for those who of us who are from Northern Ireland! The characters range from the good hearted to the greedy to the apathetic. The film never judges any of them but lets them be played out in their own way, it works well for this reason. The downside is that the support cast is almost more important than the banner star; the upside is that the film is never dull and is colourful throughout. The narrative takes a dramatic (if slightly melodramatic) turn at the end, but still produces a strong climax to the film, but it is the support cast and Johnny adventures through the dark streets of Belfast that makes the film move.

However to say that is the only driver is to do a disservice to the direction and photography. While the film doesn't really capture the spirit of Belfast, it does portray it as the prison that Johnny would view it as, and it does it with a great deal of style and imagination. Some scenes show great imagination - witness the faces in the beer bubbles or the pictures haunting Johnny in the art gallery.

Overall this is a great film, although narrative tends to take second place to the feel of the film, the style and the colourful character. Not near the class of Third Man but certainly a stylish and enjoyable film for those who enjoyed it's bigger brothers.

Odd Man Out is an almost flawless movie that is such a tribute to great acting, writing, and storytelling. In a time when there are so many blow em' up action movies with actors showing the talent levels of my radio this movie can show you that there can indeed be great films that don't involve huge explosions, and that much gunplay, and also this movie proves that so much of a story can develop within a five mile radius, if not that big, and show you just how intense human drama can be. James Mason, in one of his best performances ever plays Johnny McQueen, an IRA member who is hunted by the law. After he is shot his friends seek help, having to leave him alone, in order to find someone that will help him. He must run after the cops almost find him. What ensues is a movie that is not pro-IRA or pro-Britain but an incredible character-driven movie in a movie you would not expect to find one. The movie takes place all over the city, as Johnny McQueen and all of those associated with him have an incredible adventure, not to mention his love interest. The acting is beyond phenomenal, these actors give these characters a great amount of depth, and they seem to realize the backdrop of the conflict at hand, and play the scenario perfectly.

This time does not exist anymore, the conflict of which this movie takes place in might, but fifty years later attitudes, traditions, and conventions of the day have changed a lot. This movie is almost an incredible time capsule, capturing the feeling of the time, and the conflict of the time without telling any names, you know the organization that the movie is talking about but no name is mentioned, and a name really doesn't need to be mentioned. This movie is all around phenomenal, in the message it conveys, and the way it conveys it. Odd Man Out uses this conflict to portray an idea of peace, an idea to stop killing, and to stop violence. In this film the movie lends the conflict to senselessness, by the end of the film the goals of both sides seem like a moot point, and that all that happened as a result of the conflict was a lot of violence, murder, turmoil, and nothing achieved. I cannot say enough that the one key to the success of the film is the acting. James Mason is in top form as the gunman that wonders around the unnamed town, the supporting cast is nothing short of spectacular, the acting makes this movie.

By some critics this was called the best British movie in the Post World War 2 era, for a number of years. In the immediate years following the war that is hard to debate, odd man out is quite a spectacle, a phenomenal film without question. The movie is so many things: a great character study, a brilliant film exploring man's own problems with it's own kind, a sad movie, a love story, and a movie that exemplifies the way movies should be made, obviously I give this movie a glowing endorsement. Many people say that movies in this time had shallow characters, that were unoriginal, and unrealistic. This movie shows just the opposite, and if you were to watch most mainstream movies today you would find that accusation true of most modern movies, but this movie shows just how strange, and sometimes remarkable we are, and shows very mush, in it's own way how different we are, and I love movies like this where the characters are what make the movie, the plot is important too, but it is the unique and unexpected characters that make this movie so much more than a standard movie, this movie is a classic. This is a movie that is almost mesmerizing, engrossing to the point you almost forget where you are, few movies achieve that, this is definitely an achievement for British cinema, and an achievement for cinema overall.

One of the most beautifully directed (Carol Reed) and photographed (Robert Krasker) films I have seen. The story revolves around the attempts of various citizens of Belfast to either aid, comfort or kill a wounded revolutionary gunman. A great deal has been written about this picture, concerning mostly its meaning, and I'm going to (heretically) skip over these issues and focus instead of why I think the film works so well as a piece of art rather than try to figure out what it's saying.

Essentially what Reed and Company have done is create a dark and gloomy urban landscape and made it seductive, even precious to us, by making us care about the people we meet there. Not that these are especially likable people. Many of them aren't, but they're presented fairly and, till near the end, without too much melodrama; and the way they're offered to us, which is to say their environments, vastly warmer and more enticing than the cold night streets the bleeding fugitive is staggering through, create a series of dramatic contrasts between the real world most of us have to move through, and the more imaginative, safer worlds of our homes, where we can retreat to, and imagine we are something else. The wounded Johnny McQueen can afford no such luxury on this bitter night, as each little warm nest offers, for a brief while, a ray of hope that this time he will come in from the cold for good, get warm, rest a little, have his wounds taken care of, and maybe even, if he gets really lucky, find himself a warm bed to sleep in.

Alas, this is not Johnny McQueen's night. Some of the people he encounters treat him decently enough for a while, till they figure out who he is, and then calculation sets in, and selfishness wins out in the end. The film is full of the kind of nocturnal yearnings anyone who has ever lived in a cold city feels as he walks the streets, whether to a pub or train station, home or restaurant, wondering what on earth he is doing out on a night such as this. One goes past this little rowhouse on a sidewalk, or that little walk-down cafe, and looks in the window, sees the people inside, and wishes one were there. Yet cold nights have their pleasures, and even rain has a beauty, as puddles reflect the light of streetlamps and rain-streaked windows make rooms that much more inviting.

Odd Man Out takes these moods, and the musings that accompany them, and raises everything to the max. Johnny isn't merely a man walking down a street, he's a hunted criminal. As we feel as he does, everything comes more intensely into focus than it would normally; as a phone booth can look like the most wonderful place in the world when the snow starts falling. The film makes us see and feel things as we seldom do in normal life, and the result is a kind of compulsive aestheticism that may well be accidental. Anything is or can be beautiful under the right circumstances, and all interior places are inviting when the temperature drops, one hasn't eaten in hours. I suspect that this wasn't the film-makers' intention, that they were hunting bigger game, looking for larger meanings, and the trappings of their picture were intended perhaps as incidental pleasures, or maybe not as pleasures at all. But it is precisely these things,--the visual tropes, not the philosophical and theological underpinnings--that I find most interesting and gratifying about the movie. In the end films have their own meaning, and this one makes me more attentive to the smaller things in life rather than the larger issues; to snow, rain, beer, to boots and overcoats, to the thin white blankets of snow that drape cities on winter nights.

In the Northern Ireland, Johnny McQueen (James Mason) is the leader of an underground organization that needs funds to keep it in action. Johnny was in prison and has broken jail. His hideout for the last six months is in the house of Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Ryan), who has fallen in love with him, and her grandmother.

Johnny plots a factory heist to raise funds but the scheme does not work as planned and Johnny is wounded and kills a man. The clumsy driver of the runaway car panics and leaves Johnny on the street. The police organize a manhunt with a great number of policemen while Johnny's gang seeks him out. While trying to reach the hideout, Johnny is helped and betrayed while Kathleen and a priest try to find salvation for him.

"Odd Man Out" is a film about human reactions, feelings and emotions in a large scale manhunt. The plot is politically neutral and never makes any reference to the IRA or to Belfast and that is clear in the very end. Johnny McQueen may belong to IRA or to a mafia and this is not important for the film.

Carol Reed uses a magnificent camera-work associated to angles and shadows to disclose a gloomy thriller without redemption. The Brazilian DVD released by Cult Classic Distributor has no synchronization between images and subtitles and it is very difficult to follow the dialogs. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Condenado" ("The Condemned")