Os Bons Morrem Cedo

A well crafted heist thriller of the old school with the message of crime doesn't pay about a quartet of ne'er-do-wells who's stories are told in flashbacks then culminates in the daring crime which in turns leads to divisions amongst them.The leader is Miles(Rave)Ravenscourt(Laurence Harvey)who's at his gleefully sneering best with a host of well known faces(Baker,Basehart&John Ireland,there's also a young Joan Collins as Basehart's wife along with Gloria Grahame who's wonderful as a spoilt married woman to one of the gang.Full of action towards the end especially the underground scenes,the cast includes Margaret Leighton who was Harvey's real life wife.

To understand the impact one particular quote from this movie had on me, you need to know that I first saw it at an 'Astra' cinema in the 1950s, while serving in the RAF.

In a scene early on in the film, John Ireland, a sergeant in the USAF, is accusing his wife, played by Gloria Grahame, of infidelity. She turns to him with self-righteous indignation and says (as only she can) :"Eddie, your time in the Air Force has coarsened your mind."

It shouldn't be difficult to imagine how, in front of an audience comprising a couple of hundred airmen, that one line brought the house down!

That apart, this is quite a decent crime caper movie, with some similarities to The League of Gentlemen (1959), but without the humorous touches.The only blemish is the usual wooden performance from Laurence Harvey. (How on earth did that man get so many leading roles in both British and American productions?)

Harvey apart, the acting is of a high standard. Stanley Baker is particularly impressive as the broken down prizefighter and Richard Basehart and John Ireland (the two token Yanks in British minor movies of the fifties) give excellent support as the other two conspirators. The young Joan Collins is ravishing as the wife any man would rob a dozen banks for and Freda Jackson is outstanding as her manipulating witch of a mother. Gloria Grahame is (of course) brilliant as the femme fatale and there is a delightful cameo from Robert Morley as the villain's father.

An attempt by the British to make a noirish thriller in the American style and it almost pays off. It's strong on atmosphere, with some superb nighttime photography, and it has an outstanding cast even if some of them are not at their best. It's both an heist movie and a character study that delves into the lives and backgrounds of the criminals on the job, by way of flashbacks.

They are Laurence Harvey, Stanley Baker, (both very good), Richard Basehart and John Ireland, (less so), and their women include a young and highly inadequate Joan Collins, Gloria Grahame, (winging it), and a marvelous Margaret Leighton who plays the woman who is married to Harvey and who keeps him and who was also married to him in real life.

The serviceable Lewis Gilbert directs with real flair. Gilbert never made the front ranks yet many of his films were surprisingly entertaining and well-made. This is one of them.

The Good Die Young is not an evocative but generic title like The Damned Don't Cry but as quite a literal summation of the story, if an incomplete one, for the bad die young, too. This English crime drama is more kitchen-sink than country manor, and a strong showing of Yanks in the cast helps cut into the order and reserve that often keeps such British efforts plucky but tepid. What results is an involving, many-layered movie, if a decidedly downbeat one.

Four unhappy plot lines converge into one very unhappy ending: Prizefighter Stanley Baker boxes with a broken hand that ends up gangrenous and amputated. Since his wife (Rene Ray) has given their meager life savings to her wastrel brother, he doesn't know where his next farthing is coming from.

Richard Basehart quits his job in New York to return to London and fetch his English wife (Joan Collins), who is being held hostage by her manipulative, malingering old monster of a mother (Freda Jackson).

G.I. John Ireland, on 48-hour furlough, goes AWOL when he can't find a minute to spend with his self-absorbed starlet wife Gloria Grahame, making time with the hot young star on her picture (Lee Patterson).

Lawrence Harvey, a sadistic sweet-talker, gambles and carouses on the money of his rich wife (Margaret Leighton), who's fast getting fed up with his feckless ways; he dines out on being a decorated war hero, but the father who disowns him (Robert Morley) believes he exterminated a nest of Germans who were unarmed and unconscious.

During a chance meeting in a pub, Harvey, desperate to make good on a bad check he wrote, wheedles the at-first-reluctant others into a scheme for robbing a postal truck of recycled Bank of England currency. He claims to be doing it only to help them out of their jams, but his sole interest lies in helping himself....

Lewis Gilbert (later to direct Alfie and three installments of the 007 franchise) opens just as the robbery is about to take place. Then he quickly flashes back to tell how the four perpetrators got there. He intercuts their stories (rather deftly), returning to the scene of the crime and its grisly aftermath only at the end. So the strength of the movie lies in its individual vignettes and the actors who bring them to life. These are variable.

Top-billed Harvey overplays his hand as the scheming psycho, as does Grahame as the round-heeled twitch. Ireland and Basehart cope well with loosely textured roles. The breakthrough performance is Baker's, who brings to mind all those deluded pugilists in American ropes-and-canvas epics, dying for illusory glory. The wives are mostly afterthoughts, though Ray and Leighton bring some poignancy to their plights. Morley and Jackson deserve mention for the incisiveness of their peripheral roles. More a drama of converging fates than a film noir (even a Britnoir), The Good Die Young holds attention owing to its large and seasoned cast and its slow but determined pace.

The Good Die Young is a cracking British Noir picture directed by Lewis Gilbert and featuring a strong cast of British and American actors. Laurence Harvey, Stanley Baker, Richard Basehart, John Ireland, Gloria Grahame, Margaret Leighton, Joan Collins and Rene Ray are the principals. While support comes from Robert Morley and Freda Jackson.

Adapted from the novel written by Richard MacAuley, the story starts with four men pulling up in a car, guns are passed around them and it's soon evident they are about to commit a serious crime. We are then taken through the sequences for each man, how they came to be at that point in time, what brought them together and their common interest; that of women trouble and financial strife. It's excellently structured by Gilbert, four separate stories, yet all of them are on the same track and heading towards the grim and potently "noirish" final quarter. Such is the way that we as viewers have been fully informed about our characters, the impact when things get violent is doubly strong. It takes you by surprise at first because the makers have given us a smooth set-up, and then there is the shock factor because these were not criminal men at the outset. But then..

A real pleasant surprise to this particular viewer was The Good Die Young, it's got fully formed characters within a tight and interesting story. The cast do fine work, yes one could probably complain a touch that the ladies are under written, but they each get in and flesh out the downward spiral of the male protagonists. Rene Ray is particularly impressive as the fraught wife of Stanley Baker's injured boxer, Mike, while Gloria Grahame (walking like a panther) is memorable as a bitch-a-like babe driving her husband Eddie (Ireland) to distraction. Basehart is his usual value for money self, but it's Baker and Harvey who own the picture. Baker does a great line in raw emotion, a big man, big heart and a big conscious; his journey is the films emotional axis, while Harvey is positively weasel like as playboy sponger Miles Ravenscourt; someone who is guaranteed to have you hissing at the screen with his stiffness perfectly befitting the character.

Top stuff. 8/10