Audience Member
Typical of the movies of day jazzy music and obviously Adam Faith had a role being a teen idol the day ..some ofvthe old movies are very watchable but this was not the bedt
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I can't picture myself as a criminal mastermind. The lean, cruel, fast moving thief is something I'd like to believe I could be, but if I was planning a robbery, I know I'd spend more time on what mask looks cool than studying the vault schematics. I'd end up leaving fingerprints on the gun, caught at the terminal with a phoney passport, and crack under high-wattage lamps shining in my eyes. Slick Danny Ocean and and ruthless Parker are the fantasy criminals, but the regular guys in ‘this-just-went-from-bad-to-worse' scenarios always steal my attention.
Never Let Go is director John Guillermin's little known 1960s British crime flick, a dizzying palpitation-inducing nightmare situation the Safdie brothers love to subject audiences to, where the harder you try to dig yourself out of a situation, the dirtier you get. Never Let Go follows salesman John Cummings (Richard Todd) in just such a nightmare as he desperately tries to track down his car stolen by the chop shop owner Lionel Meadows (Peter Sellers). Unable to back down despite facing increasing violence, John ends up fighting not only for his set of wheels, but his job, family, and possibly, his life.
Peter Sellers's turn as brutal gangster Lionel Meadows is the most eye catching credit here. We're used to seeing slip as comfortably into the outlandish Inspector Clouseau and Dr Strangelove, as he is trying on the reserved Quilty and Being There's Chance. But the violence running through Meadows is genuinely frightening, and Sellers never once trips into parody. Instead, Meadows is a combination of Sellers' extremes, played with such an outlandish brutality that when he is reserved, speaking through gritted teeth, Meadows becomes the personification of a clenched fist, terrifying all the more as it invites us to wonder what further violence he is capable of, a tension Guillermin is a master of.
While writer / director John Gullermin might be more readily known for his blockbuster work like King Kong (1976) and Towering Inferno (1974), his earlier work like Rapture and Guns at Batasi are fascinating, claustrophobic works of psychology, vibrating with tension often lurking on the periphery. Never Let Go is another classic example of this work, but while it is on the surface a crime film, at its core, NLG is a take of the Western mythology through a throughly British lens, a sensibility shared with the Gary Cooper classic High Noon.
Meadows is the big rancher who has made his fortune stealing cattle from the little guy and rebranding them with his own crest. But this time, like Gary Cooper in High Noon forced into action because of his Tin Star badge, the little guy is forced into action because his tin car is the difference between life and death. Guillermin shows this decisive High Noon moment as the climax rise into view. After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, John sits in a pub down the street from Meadow's crooked garage, the pub and garage shown in one ultra-wide shot, reducing London to a single street. Meadows waits smiling, while John finds the courage to face Lionel Meadows in a final showdown, the British kind that, without the quick blast of a gun, is drawn out and bloody.
Richard Todd's John is a brilliantly crafted reluctant hero, a meek family man, struggling to get ahead selling feminine products (a fact the thugs readily rub in his face) squaring up to the brutish, successful businessman surrounded by macho machinery. That John is swept, against his will, into the tempest of Meadows' world makes NLG so engaging: John doesn't fight out of honour, but necessity, and each decision he makes drags him deeper into violence, ultimately jeopardising everything he is fighting to preserve as he shows up for work beaten and stumbles home bloodied. Todd brings a nebbish believability to the lead, reminding us that even at his most violent and desperate, John is a kind father, quiet worker, and average man, not an avenging hero waiting to be born.
Never Let Go is an absolute gem of British cinema, not only for the phenomenal and unusual performance from Sellers, but for Guillermin's lean and relentless storytelling. To miss it would be a crime.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I had never seen Peter Sellers as a hard core criminal, an absolute sociopath.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A little too long, but a good telling of the story, which I didn't know about until seeing this movie.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/28/23
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Audience Member
This was a fascinating crime story in Delaware in the 90's, and it is mis in the info below. Anne Marie Fahey worked for the Governor of Delaware as his scheduling secretary, not the "powerful" attorney with whom she had an affair and he eventually murdered her. He is still awaiting a plea on his death sentence.
There is great acting and related described detective work in this movie which is altogether a long sit at over 3 hours. Fascinating how it all worked to make the arrest. Worth a watch if you record or get the disc otherwise....not with the commercials as I saw it unless you have a lot of patience.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Dont REACT immediately.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
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