Film

The Criminal

Name: The Criminal
Genre: Crime
Released: 1960
Cast: Stanley Baker, Sam Wanamaker, Grégoire Aslan, Margit Saad, Jill Bennett

A hardboiled 1960 crime film where a freshly released convict botches a racetrack heist and gets pulled back into prison. Stanley Baker plays it ice-cold as a man caught between criminal loyalty and survival, refusing to reveal where the money is hidden. Tense, expertly paced, and bleakly funny about how the system grinds everyone down.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like lean British crime pictures where tension comes from a man's silence and the pressure of prison walls, rather than from car chases or big set pieces.

Skip it if you want a brisk, twisty heist with clever planning on screen; this one is grim, spare and mostly about endurance, and its brutality lands hard without much relief.

What it asks of you: Under ninety-854 minutes of close, unhurried attention, with a harsh tone that rarely lets up and little interest in lightening the mood.

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The wildcard

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