The Cracksman

Posted by Martina Birk on Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Charlie Drake, the half-pint slapstick comedian from tele, plays an honest, little man who is the victim of fate. His problem is that he cannot resist the challenge of a lock. He gets smoothtalked by a debonair con man into opening a locked car and a safe, and lands in jail for a year.

Charlie Drake, the half-pint slapstick comedian from tele, plays an honest, little man who is the victim of fate. His problem is that he cannot resist the challenge of a lock. He gets smoothtalked by a debonair con man into opening a locked car and a safe, and lands in jail for a year.

Later he gets trapped again, in his innocence, and this time gets three years and a reputation in the cooler for being the top cracksman in the business. When he gets out he finds himself a pawn being tossed between two rival gangs.

Drake, who decided that he was going to take it easy after injuring himself doing his own stunts, falls back into slapstick literally in this film. He is swept down a sewer, crashed through a door, bodily flung into the boot of a car and he endures several other physical indignities for the sake of laughs.

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Trouble is that most of the comedy situations are stretched too long. Some more astute cutting by editor Richard Best would have added a tang to the screenplay and Peter Graham Scott’s lively direction.

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The Cracksman

UK

  • Production: Associated British. Director Peter Graham Scott; Producer W.A. Whittaker; Screenplay Lew Schwartz, Charlie Drake, Mike Watts; Camera Harry Waxman; Editor Richard Best; Music Ron Goodwin
  • Crew: (Color) Extract of a review from 1963. Running time: 112 MIN.
  • With: Charlie Drake George Sanders Dennis Price Nyree Dawn Porter Finlay Currie

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