starring James Mason, Kathleen Ryan, Robert Newton
directed by Carol Reed
116 minutes
Johnny McQueen (James Mason) is a member of an Irish nationalist group. He became a minor celebrity six months earlier when he broke out of prison. He has been in hiding since then in the house that belongs to Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Ryan) and her grandmother.
Johnny and three other men rob the pay offices of a mill operation in Belfast, Northen Ireland. Johnny shoots and kills one of the guards after the guard has shot him in the shoulder. He gets separated from his friends as they are trying to escape and wanders through Belfast in bad shape trying to find his way back to the house in which they planned they heist.
Johnny's friends go out looking for him. Two of them get killed and the other gets arrested. Kathleen searches for Johnny, with whom she has fallen in love. She is determined not to see him fall into the hands of the police who are putting a lot of effort into finding him.
I saw this movie as part of the 2024 edition of the Noir City DC film festival. It was the front half of a double feature. The back half was Victims of Sin (1951). I'm not sure why they chose to pair these two films together. I fail to seethe thread that connects them.
James Mason was the lead and played the central character but there were long stretches of this film where he was on screen but didn't say or do very much.
Robert Newton played an artist who wanted to paint Johnny's picture. He played the part of Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1950) which I saw when I was much younger than I am now. William Hartnell played a barkeep who tried to help Johnny after he stumbled into his saloon. Hartnell played the Doctor on Doctor Who for the first three seasons of the show (1963-66).
This movie grew on me as I watched it. I wasn't terribly into it until Johnny was on the run from the police. I wasn't sure how it was going to end but I was really impressed by how it all turned out. It was quite moving although there were some moments in the middle where it had me scratching my head. All the performances were good.
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