Michael Apted followed his nihilistic rise-and-fall pop music drama Stardust (1974) with this brutal gritty crime thriller. Featuring Stacey Keach as an alcoholic ex-detective triggered into action when his ex-wife Jill (Carol White) and child are kidnapped by the ruthless Keith (David Hemmings). Complications arise when Jill’s new husband, Foreman (Edward Fox) is blackmailed by Keith’s boss Vic (Stephen Boyd) to steal £1 million from his own company in exchange for Jill, and Jim struggles with his addiction aided by his dim-witted friend Teddy (Freddie Starr).
Apted’s superb use of London locations brings an immediacy and near-documentary quality to the evocative mise-en-scène, and the performances – especially Boyd‘s as a brutal Irish patriarch – give the film the hardest of edges, essential for the best British crime thrillers. The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, “provides action and moral ambiguity enough to stock a Don Seigel thriller, and a gallery of underworld types as sharply and fully delineated as anything this side of Performance.”
Unavailable since the VHS era Lost Reels is proud to present a special screening of this stimulating, underseen gangster classic from an original 35mm print courtesy of Park Circus.
