Review: Sitting Target


Hearing that his wife (Jill St. John, miscast with a wavering accent) is pregnant to another man and leaving him, hardened crim Oliver Reed breaks out of prison with his more outwardly charming cohort Ian McShane with the purpose of tracking down his wife and her lover, and killing them. He’s a real feminist, this one. Freddie Jones plays a creepy explosives expert who also escapes prison with Reed and McShane, Edward Woodward plays a cop hoping to nab Reed and protect St. John, and Frank Finlay is the rich crime boss whom Reed comes to call a favour from. Robert Beatty turns up as a gun dealer.

 

Directed by Douglas Hickox (who also gave us such cult gems as “Entertaining Mr. Sloane” and the all-star “Theatre of Blood”), this tough, incredibly grim-faced crime/caper from 1972 has a bad reputation from the few who seem to have seen it, and for the life of my I cannot understand why. For me, the harshness, ugliness, and grimness were actually positives, so perhaps that’s where others differ. But I think if you liked “Get Carter”, “Point Blank”, or “The Long Good Friday”, this is somewhat similar in tone at the very least.

 

Oliver Reed has an intense and intensely unpleasant screen persona, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing here. In fact, it means he’s perfectly cast (he even kicks a dog for chrissakes), and he and ratbag cohort Ian McShane (who nowadays tends to play Oliver Reed-type roles, ironically) make for a fine unscrupulous pairing. Freddie Jones, meanwhile, is his usual unrestrained self, and you wouldn’t want him any other way. If there’s any actor more capable of being creepy and unpleasant than Oliver Reed, it’s bug-eyed Jones, one of the best British character actors.

 

Edward Woodward is as solid- and rigid- as ever, playing a cop, which sure is some major casting against type right there. Some of the other actors end up a bit wasted (Frank Finlay especially), and I’m not a big Jill St. John fan, but honestly the only drawback here is some poor projection work ruining a potentially fun, nasty car chase/wreck towards the end. The bad 70s cop show music score by Stanley Myers (“No Way to Treat a Lady”, “The Deer Hunter”) has dated badly, too.

 

Scripted by Alexander Jacobs (“Point Blank”, “French Connection II”, and “An Enemy of the People”, with Steve McQueen), it’s a tough bastard of a film that deserves praise and more awareness. Pretty well-directed too, with an especially tense highwire prison break a standout. A good and underrated film awaiting rediscovery, with a prison that looks as harsh, brutal and ugly as its protagonist.

 

Rating: B-

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