Operation Diplomat

I expected a little more from this film. Fast paced yes, but I had to suspend disbelief over and over. I expect that sort of thing in an old b movie, but things happened too conveniently too often. It just got silly. The acting is average, the storyline slightly above average. Pass on it....

A lot happens in this fast-paced thriller from 1953, apparently condensed down from a popular TV series which may go some way in explaining the lightning-fast plotting. The storyline involves a respected surgeon who is waylaid one night and paid to perform an operation on a mysteriously ill old man. The next day it soon transpires that his actions were the part of some nefarious criminal plan. He learns that the criminal gang haven't finished with him yet, so with the police hot on his tail he must both prove his innocence and bring the criminal plot to a close.

It's familiar stuff indeed, but OPERATION DIPLOMAT works thanks to the above-average execution. The use of Nettlefold Studios is done in such a way as to make this look like a respectably-budgeted film, even if it wasn't. There are murders a-plenty here, alongside some well-directed action from TOWERING INFERNO director John Guillerman; a rooftop chase is a particular standout. I love the choice of lead in this one, the incredibly tall and impossibly gaunt Guy Rolfe, an actor who was to finish his career making PUPPET MASTER sequels for Charles Band in America but who acquits himself very well here. The supporting cast has also been well picked, with the lovely Patricia Dainton never failing to disappoint and Ballard Berkely having fun as one of his stock detective characters. A youthful Anton Diffring appears too, and I spotted a cameo from Desmond Llewellyn in the closing scenes.

Surgeon Guy Rolfe is stuck into an ambulance and taken to a mysterious location to operate on a mysterious patient. Then he is clunked on the head, wakes up at home. As the bodies start piling up wherever he is to be found, he comes to realize that an important industrialist is being kidnapped. Trouble is that Scotland Yard won't believe him. For some reason they think he has something to do with the deaths.

This movie is a well-acted, exciting, thoroughly muddled thriller with a bunch of loose threads. Officials give false names for no reason, the police leave important witnesses unguarded and let a surgeon indulge in the rough-and-tumble while they stand around gawping, for no reason I could see except to increase the fog. Even the movie's title refers to the randomly-named "Operation" the government institutes when they realize that the industrialist is missing.

It's pretty good for a thorough piece of shoddy nonsense. I was having a fine time until the Mysterious Foreign Woman (Lisa Daniely) is running away from the bad guys. They were so slow about that sequence, it gave me time to review and count the unpatched holes.

Starting like a quickie remake of 'State Secret', with surgeon Guy Rolfe enlisted to operate upon a mystery VIP; it also anticipates the scenes in 'North by Northwest' and 'The Ipcress File' where the tidied up temporary locations of victims of abductions are revisited by the police to find the cupboard bare.

As befits an adaptation of a TV serial, there's an awful lot else going on in this enjoyable early thriller directed with humour and panache by the up and coming John Guillermin, with superb location work against a backdrop of postwar London by cameraman Gerald Gibbs.

Brilliant thriller by the inimitable Francis Durbridge, the man behind the Paul Temple series, always sophisticated intrigues impossible to figure out with atmospherical ingredients as the plots always thicken. Guy Rolfe is perfect as the surgeon who is kidnapped to operate on a patient unknown, who appears to have been a kidnapped top diplomat and security chief whisked away to Berlin, but naturally there are complications. The tempo is high, the suspense constantly increases, but there will be no disappointments, although it will be impossible to get the hang of all of it. Another marvel adding to the intensity of the film is the very suggestive music by Wilfred Burns - I never saw his name in another film.