AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

marktayloruk Really good film that can be watched time and again. They would all have been better off staying single-especially Eddie, whose desertion from the USAF I find indefensible. Nor should Joe have grassed up Rave! One side-Eddie says he's going to do something he should have done long ago-slight jump and he dumps his wife in the bath. Did he originally put her over his knee and spank her?

James Hitchcock Although some purists would insist that film noir was an exclusively American genre, I have always taken the view that there were a number of British examples (and possibly also continental European ones such as Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques"). Notable British noirs include Carol Reed's trilogy of "Odd Man Out", "The Third Man" and "The Man Between", and Robert Hamer's "It Always Rains on Sunday" and "The Long Memory". Lewis Gilbert's "The Good Die Young" is another to add to this list. Gilbert was a versatile director; besides crime films he could also turn his hand to war movies ("Sink the Bismarck!"), action-adventure (several James Bonds) and comedies ("Educating Rita", "Shirley Valentine").Although the film is set in Britain it features several American characters, doubtless to increase its marketability across the Atlantic. It opens with four men a car, about to commit an armed robbery. It then tells each man's story in a series of flashbacks, explaining how the four, none of whom has a previous criminal record, came to be in the position where they see crime as the only solution to their problems. The film then flashes forward again to show the robbery itself and its aftermath. Although there is a conventional "crime does not pay" ending, the treatment of the criminals is surprisingly sympathetic, perhaps more sympathetic than the American Production Code would have permitted at this date.The one member of the gang who is an out-and-out scoundrel is their leader, Miles 'Rave' Ravenscourt. Rave is the son of an aristocratic family who has been living beyond his means and has run up heavy gambling debts. Rave's main way of financing his lifestyle has been sponging off his independently wealthy wife Eve- his father, from whom he is estranged, has long since cut him off without a penny- but eventually even Eve's patience has run out, leaving him in need of an alternative source of income.Joe (one of the Americans) needs to find the fare to fly back to the United States with his young English wife Mary to get away from the malign influence of her selfish, manipulative mother. Mike is a former boxer who is unable find work following his retirement from the ring and an accident in which he lost a hand. Eddie is an American airman based in England trapped in a failing marriage to an unsuccessful actress. The script implies that his wife Denise is cheating on Eddie with a handsome young actor, but this is never made completely explicit, perhaps to keep the censors happy. All three men seem to believe that they have some sort of grievance against "the system", and this makes it easy for Rave to recruit them to his scheme.There are several good acting contributions- from Laurence Harvey as the outwardly suave but inwardly vicious Rave, from a strikingly lovely Joan Collins as Mary, from Gloria Grahame as the spiteful, catty Denise and from Richard Basehart as Joe and Stanley Baker as Mike, both essentially decent men lured into criminality by the unscrupulous Rave. The one weak link in the plot was Eddie's participation in the robbery, as his problems are not so much financial as emotional; Denise obviously despises him, and there is no suggestion that his having more money would persuade her to return to him, or that he would welcome her back if she did. There is also an effective cameo from Robert Morley as Rave's autocratic and overbearing father, Sir Francis Ravenscourt; with a parent like that Rave's turning to crime seems perhaps more understandable.British crime dramas in the fifties generally took a fairly simple "cops good, robbers bad" attitude towards their subject-matter; "The Good Die Young" was one of the few to take the line, more common in American noirs, that questions of right and wrong or good and evil are often more complicated than that.The film's climax takes place at Heathrow Airport, and involves a man named Joseph, a girl named Mary and their unborn child who are facing a long and possibly difficult journey. Was this, I wondered, a deliberate reference to certain events which took place in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago? 8/10

blanche-2 "The Good Die Young" is a 1954 British film with an impressive cast consisting of Laurence Harvey, Stanley Baker, John Ireland, Richard Basehart, Joan Collins, Margaret Leighton, and Gloria Grahame.The four men band together to commit a robbery, though they're not experienced criminals - just three men down in their luck and desperate, and one snake (that would be Harvey). Richard Basehart plays Joe, whose wife Mary left for England to visit her sick mother and hasn't returned. Her mother is the type that has attacks whenever Mary says she's going home. Meanwhile, she's pregnant and he has to get her back to America, but since he's quit his job, he needs money.John Ireland is Eddie, who is married to an actress (Grahame). She is so busy on the set (and with her costar) that he goes AWOL to have time with her. By the time he realizes she's not worth it, it's too late.Stanley Baker is Mike Morgan, who loses his gangrenous hand after a boxing match, and needs money to live on.Laurence Harvey is a worm married to a wealthy woman (Leighton) who refuses to pay his gambling debt and wants him to move to Africa with her. He comes up with the idea of the robbery and convinces the others.This has the look and feel of a British B picture from the era and there really isn't anything exceptional about it. It's not as suspenseful as it could have been, though it isn't bad. It's worth seeing for these young actors, and indeed, Harvey, Baker,Leighton, and Graham did die young, sadly. The only one today still with us is the indomitable Joan Collins, now 79.Worth a look.

bob the moo Four men are in a car. They are all from different walks of life and a short time ago none of them were nothing more than drinking buddies – now they are on their way somewhere with a box full of guns. A washed up boxer, a man trying to win his wife back from a controlling mother, an RAF officer with a cheating wife and a "gentleman" with no means of his own. Only a few weeks ago, "gentleman" Miles finds himself out of luck with his women and his money pit in-laws and, needing money so, when he meets the other three men, he sees a chance to take advance of their various needs.For a while back in the fifties, British cinema seemed to have enough grit and clout to it to almost be able to compete with the American market in regards crime thrillers (if not quite noirs); The Good Die Young is one of those that has a good try and is a pretty enjoyable piece even if it lacks the grit and tension of similar American products. The film opens with an intriguing set up but then jumps back to establish the story and characters and it is here where it becomes weak. The back stories are rather melodramatic and it doesn't fit well with what was meant to be a bit tougher and gripping; they are interesting enough to do the job but I must admit to feeling that they were a bit dragged out and unnecessarily long. However, if you make it through this main body of the film you'll get to an ending that is just what the film should have been throughout. I won't spoil it but it is enjoyably brutal, downbeat and gripping – "about time" was my thought when I realised that the film had gotten going.The cast do their best with the melodrama but the material isn't there for them and they are mixed. Harvey and Baker stand out with strong performances; Basehart is good but Ireland feels like he is just making up the numbers. Naturally Collins stands out today, and she is quite good but the melodrama is made better by Grahame, Ray and, to a lesser extent, Leighton. Of course the men are all much better in the proper crime side of the film and this is partly due to better and more atmospheric direction from writer/director Gilbert, who also injects the pace when it is required.Overall this is an average film mainly because the back story takes up far too much of the film, is too melodramatic and doesn't sit well with the tough tension promised in the first scene and delivered at the end. With the main trunk being rather plodding, the ending does feel a lot better mainly because you're grateful that the film has gotten going. Could have been great but is merely reasonably good; worth seeing for genre and period fans but will not impress a wider audience.