Perhaps it goes without saying that when people are financially challenged they will do the damnedest things. Here's a case in point for your inspection. One of the virtues of intelligence, (and I might also add sanity), is being able to put the right solution to right problem. You might be surprised how many reasonably intelligent people have difficulty with this when faced with adverse situations. This drama, centering as it does on the trials of four young couples struggling with troublesome relationships involving each other and the almighty cash, successfully riveted this viewer's attention.
I was nodding off when this came on television and suddenly found myself focused on the story from beginning to end. The idea of four relatively young men meeting at some kind of moral and ethical crossroads in a British pub communicated swiftly after the shock appeal of the opening sequence. The setup was so intriguing and the exposition so seeded with the scent of a hokey and melodramatic tragedy in the making, the viewer tends to feel committed to seeing this thing through to the end somehow. This is exactly what the four main characters are tasked with doing. What is so compelling here is that these men are not career criminals or inherently evil.
The cast is all A-list leading men and women. It's hard to imagine anything going awry with the likes of Lawrence Harvey, Gloria Grahame, Richard Basehart, the poor man's Elizabeth Taylor Joan Collins, John Ireland, newcomer Rene Ray, the right honorable Stanley Baker and Margaret Leighton involved, and quite frankly, it seems to me hardly anything does. Here and there, the four interlocking stories of characters challenged to exercise their moral imagination sometimes flirts and smacks right up against melodrama while skirting around the fringes of soap opera, but these relatively good guys going wrong under the malevolent influence of a philandering born killer as represented by Harvey, are always engaging and I found myself invested enough to want to find out what they would do next. The story itself seemed to me a great deal more comprehensible and definitely a bit easier to follow than the shenanigans of the career criminals in PULP FICTION (1994). At least it was more readily apparent to me and my taste for moral closure what this tale was all about.
Lawrence Harvey is Miles 'Rave' Ravenscourt, the man with the nefarious plan. At first, he is scoffed at by Stanley Baker as newly retired prize fighter Mike Morgan, a man without a hand, along with John Ireland as Eddie Blaine, who has deserted from military service to keep an eye on his unfaithful wife, Denise Blaine, played with crafty flirtatiousness by Gloria Grahame. We find Richard Basehart as Joe Halsey up against it, battling a possessive mother for the heart of his wife, Mary Halsey, as played by Joan Collins. In flashbacks, we glimpse at the moral dilemmas confronting this troubled quartet. We come to sympathize with them, when, despite their best intentions, at least three of these hapless fellows start to stray from their moral compass to consider the line of least ethical and moral resistance.
In the end, this cinematic offering comes across as an inversion of The Three Musketeers, with Harvey's Ravenscourt serving as a demented D'Artagnan. After helpfully taking them past the point of no return, Miles gleefully presides over the suspenseful proceedings as the whole caper he first proposed unravels before their very eyes. Next thing we know, director Lewis Gilbert is delivering up the poetic justice and closing out the resolution in a kind of moral geometry that is palpably satisfying and far more plausible than anything that has come before. The ending resounds with a dignity that goes beyond any ambiguity the exposition might have suggested or promised. These four men who conspired to get something for nothing, now are seen earning nothing for something far more important and non-negotiable.
I was nodding off when this came on television and suddenly found myself focused on the story from beginning to end. The idea of four relatively young men meeting at some kind of moral and ethical crossroads in a British pub communicated swiftly after the shock appeal of the opening sequence. The setup was so intriguing and the exposition so seeded with the scent of a hokey and melodramatic tragedy in the making, the viewer tends to feel committed to seeing this thing through to the end somehow. This is exactly what the four main characters are tasked with doing. What is so compelling here is that these men are not career criminals or inherently evil.
The cast is all A-list leading men and women. It's hard to imagine anything going awry with the likes of Lawrence Harvey, Gloria Grahame, Richard Basehart, the poor man's Elizabeth Taylor Joan Collins, John Ireland, newcomer Rene Ray, the right honorable Stanley Baker and Margaret Leighton involved, and quite frankly, it seems to me hardly anything does. Here and there, the four interlocking stories of characters challenged to exercise their moral imagination sometimes flirts and smacks right up against melodrama while skirting around the fringes of soap opera, but these relatively good guys going wrong under the malevolent influence of a philandering born killer as represented by Harvey, are always engaging and I found myself invested enough to want to find out what they would do next. The story itself seemed to me a great deal more comprehensible and definitely a bit easier to follow than the shenanigans of the career criminals in PULP FICTION (1994). At least it was more readily apparent to me and my taste for moral closure what this tale was all about.
Lawrence Harvey is Miles 'Rave' Ravenscourt, the man with the nefarious plan. At first, he is scoffed at by Stanley Baker as newly retired prize fighter Mike Morgan, a man without a hand, along with John Ireland as Eddie Blaine, who has deserted from military service to keep an eye on his unfaithful wife, Denise Blaine, played with crafty flirtatiousness by Gloria Grahame. We find Richard Basehart as Joe Halsey up against it, battling a possessive mother for the heart of his wife, Mary Halsey, as played by Joan Collins. In flashbacks, we glimpse at the moral dilemmas confronting this troubled quartet. We come to sympathize with them, when, despite their best intentions, at least three of these hapless fellows start to stray from their moral compass to consider the line of least ethical and moral resistance.
In the end, this cinematic offering comes across as an inversion of The Three Musketeers, with Harvey's Ravenscourt serving as a demented D'Artagnan. After helpfully taking them past the point of no return, Miles gleefully presides over the suspenseful proceedings as the whole caper he first proposed unravels before their very eyes. Next thing we know, director Lewis Gilbert is delivering up the poetic justice and closing out the resolution in a kind of moral geometry that is palpably satisfying and far more plausible than anything that has come before. The ending resounds with a dignity that goes beyond any ambiguity the exposition might have suggested or promised. These four men who conspired to get something for nothing, now are seen earning nothing for something far more important and non-negotiable.