Review: Cage of Gold

 

Artist Jean Simmons is about to marry dull but thoroughly decent doctor James Donald, when her smoothie cad ex-boyfriend David Farrar (a former flyboy and current smuggler) comes waltzing back in her life. She finds herself unable to resist him and leaves a stable life with Donald for the clearly unscrupulous Farrar. Soon they are even married. Sadly for Simmons, once Farrar finds out that she’s a) pregnant, and b) doesn’t have quite as much money as he’d assumed, he drops her like a hot potato. The right utter bastard. Then out of the blue Simmons receives word that Farrar has died under mysterious circumstances. After a while, she has moved on and gotten back together with Donald, leaving the whole sordid mess behind her. And then Farrar turns up very well not dead and with an extortion plan in tow as he sets about making things very uncomfortable for Simmons. Madeleine Lebeau and Herbert Lom play a couple of Farrar’s underworld acquaintances, Bernard Lee turns up as a police inspector.

 

Decent performances (from occasionally rather surprising sources) are the highlight of this otherwise shoddy 1950 crime flick from director Basil Dearden (“Dead of Night”, “Khartoum”) and screenwriter Jack Whittingham (“Q Planes”, “Never Say Never Again”). David Farrar was positively stiff as a board in the otherwise gorgeous melodrama “Black Narcissus”, which was a model of its type. Here cast as an unscrupulous cad version of Cary Grant (with a touch of seedy Humphrey Bogart) Farrar is actually rather good. I didn’t know the bloke had it in him to be this thoroughly rotten and scheming. Everyone is pretty good in this one, especially sympathetic lead actress Jean Simmons in one of her better turns. She’s lovely, and so is French songbird Madeleine Lebeau. Herbert Lom is immediately perfect, so it’s a shame his role is a mere cameo that adds up to very little of importance. Bernard Lee turns up late in a stock role, but brings an innate decency and authority nonetheless. James Donald made a career out of playing boring but decent people and that’s exactly what he plays here, doing his usual rock-solid work.

 

It’s just that the film can’t help but get in its own way. The first half jarringly keeps jumping ahead in time. In a hurry, Basil and Jack? There’s also moments where the film seems to want to be “Casablanca”, with an African-American character named Sam, and Lom subbing for Peter Lorre.

 

The performances are all fine-to-good, but the storytelling is choppy and sloppy. Lousy stuff that wastes one heck of a good cast. They deserved better than they’re provided with here. Great B&W cinematography by Douglas Slocombe (“The Blue Max”, “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), but you just can’t quite latch on to anything here. A disappointment from the normally classy Ealing Studios.

 

Rating: C

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chilly t
Read more

Review: Boyka: Undisputed

Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins) is out of prison and fighting for a living, with ambitions for the ‘Most Complete Fighter’ to make a real name for himself. However, after an opponent dies during a fight, the deeply religious Boyka starts to have a crisis of conscience. He tries to make amends with the man’s widow, which eventually pits him against a local gangster (Alon Moni Aboutboul, quite good). Anything with Scott Adkins will generally get me interested, and although this series peaked with the superlative “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” , this 2017 film from director Todor Chapkanov (director of the SyFy movies “Copperhead” and “Ghost Town” ) is no slouch in a series yet to deliver anything less than solid entertainment. Producer Isaac Florentine is missed in the director’s chair, but Chapkanov gives us at the very least the series’ most dramatically ambitious entry, as Adkins’ ‘most complete fighter’ Yuri Boyka continues on his journey to redemption here. In this one, the
Read more

Review: Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear

Scott Adkins is once again Casey, an American proponent of the martial art of Ninjutsu. When Casey’s pregnant Japanese wife (Mika Hijii) is rubbed out, he’s on a vengeance mission to find her killers. A friendly face, Nakabara (Kane Kosugi) turns up at the funeral, and suggests Casey come to Thailand to deal with his grief in another country. Casey initially declines, but eventually takes Nakabara up on his offer. However, his wife’s murder still haunts Casey, and with intel supplied by Nakabara, the trail eventually leads Casey to a brutal drug baron named Goro (Shun Sugata).   I was extremely disappointed with the first “Ninja” , but had heard that this 2013 sequel from director Isaac Florentine ( “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” , “Undisputed III: Redemption” , “Ninja” ) was a damn near masterpiece of the martial-arts action movie genre. Having now finally gotten my hot little hands on it, I’d say the hype is a bit much, but this is unquestionably a much better film than the f
Read more