Well I won't give the ending away folks, but you will see it coming a MILE OFF!!
Stanley Baker, in his last film performance, plays a tired, jaded under manager in a bank he's worked at for the past ten thousand years. He longs to escape the futile tedium of work, but is, on the surface at least resigned (and apparently content) to working out his days in a gold fishbowl office where his superiors can see him but he can't see them.
'I'm poor and broke' he sighs as he neatly summarises his attitude to 'work'. If we all have to do it (as most of us sadly do) we might as well acquire as much financial gain as we can. Very early on, it's clear that Baker's character is already painfully aware that he has gone as far as he is going to go, and that alternative action is required if he is not to give way to perpetual professional atrophy.
So, in comes Britt (can't think where they got that foreign sounding name or accent from, eh chaps). I disagree with some who say that Andress can't act. True, her range is limited, but so were those of luminaries like Bogart, so I feel it's a little unfair to admonish her professional credentials in this way. Also, let's not deny that there are worse things to clock within the cinematic pantheon that Andress's 'undress', and there's plenty of that here. I make this point from a purely 'cinematic' perspective, you understand.
True, the characters are all pretty unlikeable, Warner's in particular, yet it's interesting to see him turn from repellent upper class knob into Baker's whipping boy, mysteriously travelling up and down the country for no apparent reason. (What was THAT all about?) His gesture of defiance towards the end just comes across as toothless, when it's obvious to all who the real winner of the piece is going to be....
Anyway, not bad as it goes, but far from perfect. I always love films for this era (1969-72), just for the 'feel' of the piece, and the washed out yet oddly warm feel of the print itself. As one other reviewer said, there are still traces of 'swinging' London to be found here (in the feel of the film and knowing it was made in 1970), whereas by 1972, that eponymous decade had cinema well and truly contained within it's er' 'distinctive' sartorial grip. We're on the cusp here folks, and all the better for it.
Worth watching, but don't expect to remember it tomorrow.
Stanley Baker, in his last film performance, plays a tired, jaded under manager in a bank he's worked at for the past ten thousand years. He longs to escape the futile tedium of work, but is, on the surface at least resigned (and apparently content) to working out his days in a gold fishbowl office where his superiors can see him but he can't see them.
'I'm poor and broke' he sighs as he neatly summarises his attitude to 'work'. If we all have to do it (as most of us sadly do) we might as well acquire as much financial gain as we can. Very early on, it's clear that Baker's character is already painfully aware that he has gone as far as he is going to go, and that alternative action is required if he is not to give way to perpetual professional atrophy.
So, in comes Britt (can't think where they got that foreign sounding name or accent from, eh chaps). I disagree with some who say that Andress can't act. True, her range is limited, but so were those of luminaries like Bogart, so I feel it's a little unfair to admonish her professional credentials in this way. Also, let's not deny that there are worse things to clock within the cinematic pantheon that Andress's 'undress', and there's plenty of that here. I make this point from a purely 'cinematic' perspective, you understand.
True, the characters are all pretty unlikeable, Warner's in particular, yet it's interesting to see him turn from repellent upper class knob into Baker's whipping boy, mysteriously travelling up and down the country for no apparent reason. (What was THAT all about?) His gesture of defiance towards the end just comes across as toothless, when it's obvious to all who the real winner of the piece is going to be....
Anyway, not bad as it goes, but far from perfect. I always love films for this era (1969-72), just for the 'feel' of the piece, and the washed out yet oddly warm feel of the print itself. As one other reviewer said, there are still traces of 'swinging' London to be found here (in the feel of the film and knowing it was made in 1970), whereas by 1972, that eponymous decade had cinema well and truly contained within it's er' 'distinctive' sartorial grip. We're on the cusp here folks, and all the better for it.
Worth watching, but don't expect to remember it tomorrow.