Les criminels

Director Joseph Losey's aim was to portray the ups and downs of a criminal life. This might be a common theme nowadays but back in 1960 not nine out of every ten films in the video store was exactly like this. First of all there's a much more unusual story, with three films for the price of one: a robbery, a portrayal of prison life, and a gangster romance. This could be a disappointment for fans of the crime genre. As many outdated acting mannerisms of that time, like the demonstrative walking back after a blow, can be a let down for some.

But the film is actually pretty exciting, and most of the credits go to Stanley Baker, who plays Johnny Bannion with an intense style that would become more common in the seventies. Always cheeky, willing to play the highest game, independent. Baker was known having friends in London's underworld. One scene in particular makes him a badass: two gangsters come into his cell with the purpose to rig him but it's Bannion who beats them up. Bannion probably would have lead a Colombian cocaine mafia empire just fine if he had been born a little later.

The Criminal is not everyone's cup of tea because of its script, but is definitely a great watch if you like realistic, vicious atmospheres in movies. The jazz music by John Dankworth reinforces the chaotic atmosphere brilliantly.

Stanley Baker's dodgy Irish accent strikes the only false note in Joseph Losey's hard-nosed crime drama. A lethal combination of charm, guile and brute force makes jailbird Johnny Bannion the top dog in B block. Once he's released, Bannion is plunged straight back into a world of free-flowing booze, casual sex and cool jazz in his well-appointed bachelor pad. But there's no thought of going straight as he plots a lucrative racetrack heist with the reptilian Carter (Sam Wanamaker). The intrigue here lies not in the heist itself but in the web of betrayals that follow, as Losey and screenwriter Alun Owen build an authentic portrait of the criminal underworld on both sides of the prison wall. There's no hint here of the cartoonish Swinging London and stereotypical cockney villains that continue to plague British cinema. Robert Krasker's photography lends a stark beauty to the pollarded trees in the prison courtyard and Johnny Dankworth's score, punctuated by a mournful Cleo Laine ballad, is superb. With its harsh, sweaty depiction of prison violence, this is a million miles from the upper-class shenanigans depicted in the director's later films like The Servant and The Go-Between.

Joseph Losey does a superb job of directing cinema-verite'-style from start to finish. From the moment Cleo Laine sings Thieving Boy over the opening credits, I knew I was in for a special experience. Stanley Baker spent a career delivering some of the most haunting criminal characterizations of all time, and this is one of his all-time best. Patrick Magee is memorable in a minor supporting role. An incredible gritty film.

The blacklisted Joseph Losey whose loss to the American cinema was the United Kingdom's gain took his knowledge of American prison films to fashion this gem. Starring in Concrete Jungle is the premier British tough guy Stanley Baker in a role that in America, Humphrey Bogart might have been given first crack at.

Whoever said there was no honor among thieves must have run with Baker's mob. When we meet him, he's a day away from his release from one jail sentence, but not until some prison justice is meted out to a newly arriving Patrick Magee with whom Baker has a grudge over a previous job.

No sooner is Baker out than he's back in a nice caper concerning the robbery of a racetrack. But thieves being what they are somebody rats and Baker's back in stir. But not before he's buried the loot and doesn't tell anyone, the same thing he was mad at Magee for.

It's a scurvy lot Baker has for friends, I haven't seen this many bad people hold a viewer's interest without there being any redeeming good people in a film since I first saw Goodfellas. But like Goodfellas there is something fascinating about Baker and the whole crew, people like Sam Wanamaker, Gregoire Aslan, etc. Even the cops like Laurence Naismith aren't especially heroic. Naismith admits as much, he's just got a well developed system of stool pigeons which any cop worth his badge has.

Baker really dominates the film, the United Kingdom hasn't produced an actor like him since. Concrete Jungle is a classic example of his tough guy appeal and a great introduction to him.

And you'll love Cleo Laine's singing of A Thieving Boy at the beginning and end of the film.

Stanley Baker is convincing as a brutal villain, but it looked to me that he could easily have been nobbled by several of his prison inmates. There's a lot of talk that attempts to sew the plot together, but not a lot of action - and I don't mean fights and car chases, I mean the difference between taking the audience on a cinematic journey as opposed to being told what's happening by the dialogue. There's too much telling and not enough showing. Several of the set-pieces in this essentially crime/gangster genre story are clumsily handled. The robbery is poorly covered: we don't know what the plan is, or what the perpetrators are up against, plus several opportunities for high tension are muffed. In the prison, the conflicts are fairly well developed and realised, but often they're stagey or overwrought. Gregoire Aslan is an excellent 'capo' and there is some good character work by the supporting cast, but there is also some woeful acting. The general statement of this film is that this is a grim, bleak, violent society in which ordinary man is always imprisoned - that part works, but as a drama or a thriller it's clunky and uneven. An under-developed script, some patchy, but energetic direction, and a generally excellent job of anamorphic lensing by Aussie Robert Krasker.