Calculated Risk

Low-budget thriller has THE BREAK baddie and overall regular British New Wave actor William Lucas in CALCULATED RISK, a hybrid of THE ASPHALT JUNGLE as a newly-released older short guy has big plans for a big heist (John Rutland doing Sam Jaffe) and LARCENY INC since they must dig through a pair of locations to reach the targeted goal...

Which aren't stores but bombed-out houses from twenty-years past, leading to a lucrative bank vault while Lucas, as a sophisticated yet crooked businessman (like ASPHALT backer Louis Calhern), who really doesn't need the bread (unlike Calhern and more like shifty Marc Lawrence), heads up a group of thugs resembling dockyard barflies...

Yet for two-way eye-candy's sake, the tallest, most handsome (Terence Cooper as the Sterling Hayden muscle type) has a quick hookup with adorable local girl-next-door Dilys Watling...

Also peripheral is Warren Mitchell, stealing his one scene providing random exposition and, within the main gang's heavy-lifting phase, not much happens to distinguish each crook's role in the task (except that the initial idea-man's health has him sit it out)...

Instead what's really important is historic i.e. WHEN the heist takes place...

During England's infamous Winter of/Big Freeze of 1963, where CALCULATED composer George Martin (just starting work with The Beatles) makes ample use of an icy-sounding harpsichord...

And while the Noirish atmosphere is palpably bleak for the location it's not quite claustrophobic or suspenseful enough for the crime...

Which ultimately includes an actual buried buzz-bomb that may be active, and there's very little time left before... the movie's run-time is up because, after all, this RISK is merely a programmer.

John Rutland is released from prison. The brother of his dead wife, William Lucas, meets him and takes him to the dead woman's grave, and then home. He doesn't want to hear about the plan to rob a bank through the bombed-out home next door; Rutland's plans always fail. But the prospect of 200,000 pounds changes his mind, so he perfects the plan, makes all the preparations, and prepares to send Rutland and his crew off, while he sits at home for his share. Things start to go wrong when Rutland has a heart attack and has to sit it out. Lucas takes his place. Then the bad news starts to pile up.

It's a very nice little thriller, and Norman Harrison directs it very nicely, with underground sequences that are reminiscent of the same year's THE GREAT ESCAPE. The characters are barely sketches, but well presented by their performers, and William McLeod's camerawork captures the claustrophobia of their work space very well.

A bank heist set and shot during the freezing winter of 1963. The thing is about the plot is that you knew it would never work out, it was just a question of how and why. The reason was an explosive twist. An unfamiliar main cast was somewhat refreshing.

9 for noir with a moral. Oftentimes high stakes risks should better be left alone. Or something like that.

---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Deliberately botched (for the "it's so bad it's good" crowd) 2 I don't want to see it 3 I didn't finish and or FF'd through it 4 Bad 5 I don't get it 6 Good 7 Great but with a major flaw 8 Great 9 Noir with moral 10 Inspiring with moral.

Tightly plotted, suspenseful minor British crime thriller about an ex-con who leads a group of safecrackers to break into a bank vault through the cellar of an adjacent deserted building, only to find more than they had bargained for (namely an unexploded WWII bomb). Decent performances by Warren Mitchell and William Lucas, and a taut script by Edwin Richfield (a well known British character actor of the 60s) make this worth a watch.