Very well executed

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Found Roy a thoroughly vile human being but didn't like Bob either. "For his own good"-merely an excuse from someone who'd always hated him,with or without good reason. Was rather hoping that the battered Roy would seize his gun, wound Bob,and do a runner-the cops' explanations to their superiors would have been good for a laugh! Oh-Joan Collins as teenage virgin.VERY old film!

COSH BOY is an intriguing mix of social drama and crime thriller, released in Britain in 1953. It deserves credit for tackling the subject matter of juvenile crime and delinquency in a stark and realistic way, avoiding sensation for the most part in its depiction of unpleasant events that spiral out of control and affect the lives of those involved. The film was shot by future Bond director Lewis Gilbert, who exhibits a good control of his medium even at this early stage of his career.James Kenney gives a thoroughly believable turn as the film's protagonist, one of the most unpleasant in all of 1950s cinema. Through him, the viewer gets into the mind of the thug and sees just what makes him tick. The exasperated family members are all well and good, but it's the youthful figures who stand out: an impossibly young Joan Collins as the naive girlfriend and Johnny Briggs as a callow gang member. Even Sid James and Laurence Naismith show up as coppers. There aren't many laughs here, but the oddly gripping nature of the material will see you through right till the end.

It's easy to laugh at this rather smugly here in the 21st century when it's so safe to walk the streets and drunken yobs don't blight our town centres every weekend and our youths are not indiscriminately killing each other,and we can leave our doors open all night and hug a hoodie...yeah,right. Like the infinitely better "The Blue Lamp","Cosh Boy" is an Issue Picture.There the resemblance ends.Whilst the former was a noir masterpiece,one of the most seminal of all 50s British pictures,the latter is a catchpenny bandwagon-jumping appallingly made load of tosh made to cash in a genuine fear of "Teddy Boys","Cosh Boys" and the like that held the post-war public in its sway. Because the fact that the movie is awful should not be a reason to dismiss the fears of the audience who went to see it.My father who'd fought the Italians and Germans in the African desert was a firm believer in corporal and capital punishment,as were many of his generation.No amount of sophistry will deny the fact that now our country is a far more dangerous place than in 1953 when he could happily walk the dog to the newsagents with a better than average chance of getting home unscathed. The movie "Cosh Boy",terrible as it was,brought the issue of violent youth out into the open,much the same as "Cathy come home" did for the disenfranchised 15 years later and the masterly "Scum" raised the profile of the treatment of young offenders. All these movies caught the public's attention and - ultimately - Parliament's. At a time when the Authorities were more prepared to deal robustly with bad behaviour,exemplary sentencing paved the way for the decline of the feral youths of the day.It may have all been appallingly judgemental but it worked. So..."Cosh Boy" is a lousy movie with dreadful acting and all put together for what it would cost nowadays for a haircut at Trumpers...... but it served a purpose.Lewis Gilbert may well have intended to make a piece of sensationalist dross,pure and simple,but he ended up with a movie that changed things for the better for ordinary working-class Brits.Our present bunch of Arts Council subsidised Armchair Socialists would do well to note that.According to his diaries,Kenneth Williams auditioned for a part in this movie.Tragically he didn't get it - he might have lifted it to a whole new level.

'Cosh Boy' has dreadful scripts and abysmal acting. The only attractive feature of the film is the pretty 18 year old actress Joan Collins (whatever became of her?). The storyline is condescending and moralistic. It suggests that manly discipline is needed to help in the rebuilding of the post-war family, otherwise working-class youths will turn into vicious, nasty 'cosh boys' or poor hapless single mothers. Crime had actually fallen after the war. Black market crime, and other offences, was rife in wartime BritainWhat makes this film funny, apart from the atrocious acting, is that in hindsight we can see how ridiculous some 'moral panics' are. The people that might laugh at the caricatures in this film might still go along with existing panics in Britain today - such as 'mad cow' disease, 'road rage', chlamydia teenage alcoholism etc. The total ridiculousness of this film is clear because it is so dated. However panics still grip the popular imagination today, only that they are filtered through far more sophisticated channels such as so-called public health campaigns and the media.Returning to the film. The characters are one-dimensional, it is purely an exercise in moral tub-thumping concerned with the reconsolidation of law and order in post-war society. The acting is so bad it is hilarious and I'm sure this is one film that Lewis Gilbert would not want to be reminded of.