LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

wilvram Ray Milland is not entirely comfortable as a no-nonsense American who crosses the Atlantic to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, who'd served as a commando in the British army in World War 2. He eventually finds himself at the end of a rifle wielded by the man who fired the fatal shot, which presumably accounts for the title.The credits, including a screen play by acclaimed detective author Philip MacDonald, lead you to expect rather more than is on offer here. A bit more of Britain is acknowledged than usual in films of this era, and Milland's enquiries take him to the Scottish Highlands (though actually filmed in Devon) and a brief visit to a Welsh mining community, though it's a pity they didn't use genuine Welsh actors. It's all a bit lethargic for the first fifty minutes or so as Director Jacques Tourneur concentrates on the various protagonists, including another ex-commando, now a ballet director, whom is clearly gay, played by Marius Goring. A major compensation for the duller moments is the glamorous Patricia Roc, as charming and lovely as ever.

malcolmgsw During the 1950s a number of ilms were made where the plot centres around a wartime raid that went wrong and investigations as to who was the culprit.This is one of the lesser examples of this genre.It would be difficult to call this film a thriller since there is a distinct lack not only of tension but also danger.Ray Milland ,that well known Welshman,seems to have more problem in dealing with this country's old currency than actually uncovering what went wrong and how his brother died.Patricia roc seems to have been cast as the mandatory love interest.Rather a disappointment bearing in mind the cast.Some nice location work.

robert-temple-1 Jacques Tourneur directed this postwar British mystery film very well, and the cinematography by Ossie Morris and camera operating by Arthur Ibbetson were superior, and added to the film's atmosphere considerably. Ray Milland is the lead actor, playing an American who visits England and wants to find out how and why his younger brother had died during the War. The brother (not seen in the film) had joined up as a British commando in 1940 and was mysteriously killed on a commando raid 'with not a German in sight'. Was he murdered by a comrade? Milland sets about visiting in turn all of the 12 men of the commando unit, only to discover that many of them are dead and one died only two weeks before his arrival in England after suggesting that the brother had been a murder victim. One of the surviving men is an East End wide boy played by Naunton Wayne, who is usually a bumbling gent but on this occasion is a convincing used car salesman. His girl friend 'Bubbles' who even does a singing number is played by the ever-effervescent Dora Bryan. A deeply sinister performance is contributed by Marius Goring, as a gay ballet dancer who knows how to handle a gun and whose role in the story only becomes clear at the end. Patricia Roc is the love interest, who alternates between being bouncy and adorable and being the most horrible spoilt brat who pouts if kept waiting for a few minutes and accuses Milland of not being dressed properly when he is in a mere suit and tie (she snottily points out that he has 'ruined her evening' because he hasn't had time to change into black tie). She really needed several good spankings, but does not get one, unfortunately. Milland is very effective in this mysterious tale, exerting extraordinary self-control in the face of extreme provocation from the uncommunicative and rude former comrades of his brother. There are some fine shots of the Scottish highlands as Milland pursues the truth north of the border, where the whistling of a folk tune called 'White Heather' takes on significance in terms of identifying the killer. This is a fine film without pretensions, where the intrigue is unravelled like a thread and leads Milland to strange discoveries about what really happened.

Ilya Mauter An American World War II veteran Clay Douglas (Ray Milland) comes to Scotland in order to conduct an investigation concerning death of his brother during a special mission in France during the war, the mission where he was the only casualty what appears to be very strange to Clay. Travelling through Scotland, one by one he meets former war mates of his brother and tries to inquire them as about circumstances surrounding his death. But everyone pretends to know nothing or very little about what happened back then, the fact that makes Clay Douglas more and more sure that it's in fact one of them, his former colleges, is guilty of his death. The question is: which one of them?Circle of Danger marked Jacques Tourneur's return to Europe, namely Great Britain where he went in order to make this movie. Though the Circle of Danger doesn't belong to the Film-Noir genre it might be considered the bleak shadow of Jacques Tourneur's Film-Noir classic Out of the Past. Parallels can be drown especially in terms of the story, which in both cases concerns the main character's past, only in Out of the Past Robert Mitchum's character Jeff Bailey tries to forget it, to hide from it, which ultimately proves to be impossible and results in tragic ending, while in Circle of Danger Ray Milland's character Clay Douglas decides to travel back in time and uncover its mysteries related the unclear circumstances of his brother's death in world War II. Only in Circle of Danger everything is much more `primitive', much more simplistic in terms of the story and character's development and their interactions as well as in lacking of that great wittiness of dialogs which is one of the main masterpiece ingredients of the Out of the Past, and finally the film's ending, a time where a question might arise in our minds: Is it was worthy the time we invested in seeing it? 6/10