Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The first must-see film of the year.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

In the last scene of the film, Father Tom puts his arm around Shell's shoulder and they walk away together. The film then ends. Both actors died in 1947, the year the film was released. The N.Y. Times review was published three days before F. J. McCormick, the actor who played Shell, died of a brain tumor. For my money, his is the most accomplished performance in the film, which has always been one of my favorites. He was Olivier's choice for the role of First Gravedigger in his Hamlet, a role given to Stanley Holloway after McCormick's death. McCormick was in the original cast of Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, at the Abbey Theater in Dublin, and is said to have remarked when the audience rioted on the fourth night of the play's run, "Don't blame the actors. We didn't write the play."

A wounded Irish nationalist leader attempts to evade police following a failed robbery. Action takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland.Filmmaker Roman Polanski has repeatedly cited "Odd Man Out" as his favorite film. Polanski feels that Odd Man Out is superior to "The Third Man" (1949), generally considered to be Reed's masterpiece: "I still consider it as one of the best movies I've ever seen and a film which made me want to pursue this career more than anything else. I always dreamt of doing things of this sort or that style. To a certain extent I must say that I somehow perpetuate the ideas of that movie in what I do." Respectfully, I have to disagree with Polanski. "The Third Man" is by far the Carol Reed masterpiece, and possibly the greatest film of all time. But that is not to say that "Odd Man Out" is not one of the greats, especially among films that seem to have been forgotten.

It's just after the war in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and James Mason, as Johnny, has escaped from prison after spending years there. Now he's holed up in an apartment. With the help of four or five fellow members of "The Organization," he plans the robbery of the pay office of a mill.Unfortunately, after his prison experiences, Mason's nerves are shot. He's subject to dizzy spells. The woman who loves him, Kathleen Ryan, tries to dissuade him from leading the robbery, but Mason insists.It doesn't go well. In a scene filled with suspense and verisimilitude, Mason stumbles when leaving the mill, tangles with an armed guard and kills him, while he himself is seriously wounded. Mason manages to hang on to the getaway car for one or two blocks, then falls off onto the street and lurches into an alley to escape the police who have now been alerted. Mason is a revolutionary, a thief, and now a murderer but our sympathies are largely with him.That scene in which he falls from the car is exquisite. Dan O'Herlihy and Roy Irving are trying to hold him, his legs hanging outside, but his wounded body slips from their grasp and he rolls over and over in the middle of the road. The driver, Cyril Cusack, speeds on for another block before screeching to a halt. The three men sit in the motionless car and shout angry accusations at one another while they stare back at Mason's body, uncertain of whether to back up or cut around the block and pick him up. As they unleash their anger and indecision, Mason disappears into a maze of brick alleys and shabby housing.For the rest of the film, Mason may be the central figure, hallucinating and bleeding to death as he's wanders alone on the cobblestone streets, tugged this way and that by frightened citizens who don't want to get involved, dumped in a field full of discarded bathtubs and toilets, or locked away in the private booth of a pub run by a nervous owner, but he's essentially passive. The people into whose lives he staggers all have different plans for him. The weather meanwhile changes from sunny afternoon, to twilight, to rain, and then to a generous snowfall.There isn't space enough to list all the virtues of this superb film, but Carol Reed's direction is magnificent. The photography by Robert Krasker captures the slick streets and the stark poverty of the city's poor with a dispassion that's almost clinical and, in addition, adds dramatic shadows and lighting techniques that adumbrate Reed's later "The Third Man".The cast could hardly be bettered. O'Herlihy and Cusack are fine as the two stupid and impulsive gang members who are out searching for Mason among the brick ruins but decide to stop at the local whore house for a drink. Robert Newton, as a tempestuous artist, wants to save the dying light in Mason's eyes. W. G. Fay as the priest wants to save his soul. Elwyn Brook Jones as the medical-school drop out wants to save his body. F. J. McCormick as the weaselly Shell wants to schlep Mason to the church in hopes of being given a reward by Father Tom, a reward of renewed faith that Shell somehow confuses with material wealth. ("The Pope has a lot of money, and a man's got to live.") There's a comic element that surfaces in this prolonged tragedy from time to time. Much of it stems from the unpretentious folk poetry that ordinary Irish speech is sometimes transformed into. It's colorful, innovative, and not in any way forced. Nobody is a caricature. Nobody is Barry Fitzgerald. These actors, even in minor parts, have real faces and the complex personalities to go with them. Father Tom, the priest, is the most admirable character, a white-haired old gnome who speaks common sense in a way no one else does, except perhaps Dennis O'Dea as the Police Inspector, who has a stony face and an arid voice but who sees not "good and bad" but "innocence and guilt." I can't recommend this too highly.

This film noir directed and produced by Carol Reed received critical acclaim on both sides of the pond in 1948; Best Film editing in America and Best British Film of the Year. James Mason plays Johnny McQueen, the leader of an underground Irish organization. A precisely planned heist will put much needed funds in the coffers to keep the group going. Members of the gang feel that Johnny is not ready to pull the job off, because he has been hold up inside hiding too long. The crime is underway and things go sour and Johnny is wounded and doesn't make it back to the hideout. He will roam and hide in the underbelly of a snowy Belfast. The local police put on an all-out search with intent to capturing the revered Johnny McQueen. Suspenseful and dark. A real strong cast that also features: Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, Kathleen Ryan, Denis O'Dea, Kitty Kinwan and Dan O'Herlihy.