Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The Long Memory is directed by Robert Hamer, is based on the novel by Howard Clewes and stars John Mills, Geoffrey Keen, Elizabeth Sellars, John Slater, Eva Bergh and John McCallum.Davidson (John Mills) goes aboard a boat to ask his girlfriends father if he can marry her. Criminal associates of her father are also aboard and when a fight breaks out one of the gang is killed. Davidson is wrongly accused of the crime by his girlfriend and her father so they don't incriminate the man actually responsible.Wrongly convicted and sent to prison Davidson dreams of getting revenge. When he gets out he goes looking for those who accused him. His girlfriend (Elizabeth Sellars) is now married to a Police Inspector (John McCallum). An eager journalist called Craig (Geoffrey Keen)believes Davidson when he says he is innocent and he follows him as he goes after those who were on the boat that night.The film is interesting too for the viewer because part of you want's Davidson to dish out some revenge but at the same time you don't want him to, if he does he will end up back in prison again or worse receive the death penalty. Mills is excellent as an ordinary, decent man who's life is turned upside down and because of that becomes embittered and obsessed. It's a rare dark role for Mills and he is brilliant, it's a shame he was never able to play more characters like this. He really lets us see the rage this man has lurking just beneath the surface and lets you see how driven he is to get revenge.The ever wonderful Keen is a treat as the journalist who knows he's on to a good story and also believes in Davidson's innocence.Eva Bergh is excellent as a young waitress at a café who befriends Davidson and ends up falling in love with him, their scenes together are very tender and Mills does a good job of showing he is coming to care for her but doesn't want to risk trusting her again after the way his girlfriend treated him. You want this pair to get together and you hope all will work out well for them.Sellars is good as the woman who only cares about herself and doesn't realise until much later just what her accusations cost Davidson.This is a very good thriller and I love it's use of grimy and stark real locations. Strong performances and a gripping story make this well worth a watch.

The Long Memory has John Mills getting out of prison after serving 12 years for a crime he didn't commit. Murder no less and the "victim" framed Mills for his own death.Despite the advice he's given that he should just chalk it up and go on with his life, that advice is hard to take. No, Mills is going to find out the truth and settle things with the folks that perjured themselves in court and put him in this jackpot.Fascinating though that Scotland Yard who apparently might have had some doubts about the case or at least paying attention to his public threats about these people put a tail on Mills. But he's too clever for that.There's not much you can do about perjured testimony though. Any number of wrong people in jail in any legal system can tell you that.One should also note the presence of John Chandos the man who is supposed to be dead and living high on the hog now and John McCallum as the Scotland Yard Inspector. Mostly Eva Bergh as one of the false witnesses whose guilt is too much to bear.The Long Memory is a nicely done British noir.

John Mills tracks down the real culprit of the murder he was sent to jail for in this tense British drama of exile and return. The real murderer is now a comfortable businessman, and the visual contrasts between his dubious offices in the London docks and Mills' derelict boat far out on the river estuary gives a resonance to the film it would be hard to find in a modern setting. Freed from jail but still imprisoned by the past, Mills' character spurns the touching companionship of another refugee on the Kent marshes (Eva Bergh) about whose past we know nothing, but it seems to be destiny that has brought them together. This is one of the few films that resolves a labyrinthine revenge-story without the plot becoming mechanical, and the bleak monochrome visuals are part of its emotional power.

This is a highly superior British film directed by Robert Hamer. All of the cast give splendid performances, and there are some truly wonderful character roles, the best such performance coming from John Slater, who is amazingly bizarre and original. The film features a man let out of prison after twelve years for a murder he did not commit, and his search for the people who gave false witness and put him there. John Mills delivers one of his first rate performances as a grimly determined, sombre and brooding man who is obsessed with the injustice done to him. With him at the centre of the story, the entire film then becomes wholly convincing. There are some wonderful location shots, and the row of abandoned barges rotting in the mudflats of the Thames Estuary is an eerie main setting for much of the action. Elizabeth Sellars is particularly effective in making this film work. She plays a despicable coward, whose cowardice runs so deep it effects every aspect of her existence. In order to portray something as profound as this, it was essential that she do so with understatement and restraint, occasionally veering near to immobility as the fear freezes her up inside. The fact that Elizabeth Sellars does this successfully and never gives way to the temptation to overact or settle a scene with some easy broad stroke is a tribute to her professionalism. Eva Bergh is a bit too young and pretty for her part as the Eastern European refugee girl, but that is the only slightly false note. Thora Hird is marvellous, as always. John McCallum underplays his police inspector-married-to-a-dodgy witness role very satisfactorily. The story culminates in the main characters having to face moral choices, so that this powerful, gripping and effective thriller is not only well made, but has a worthy purpose.