Lovesusti
The Worst Film Ever
Intcatinfo
A Masterpiece!
Salubfoto
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
utgard14
I was really enjoying this at first. The first fifteen or twenty minutes seemed a good set-up for a premise that sounds exciting and suspenseful. Then suddenly Laurence Harvey is walking around with dyed blonde hair and a terrible Aussie accent and the film derails itself from there. Literally nothing happens for over half an hour. Just characters going to dinner with each other and talking a lot about nothing. Carol Reed was a great director who has done much better but his attempts at building suspense between the insurance agent and the couple fell flat, in my opinion. I've seen a few reviews that referred to this as a "great cat and mouse thriller." Personally I think this is very misleading as it implies this is a movie full of action and intrigue when there's very little of either.The actors are fine, for the most part. Harvey's fake Australian accent is terrible and he tends to overact more than under. Alan Bates is good for a rather dull part. Lee Remick is beautiful and does OK with the material but her character makes choices we have to make guesses as to the reasoning behind and that sort of thing always bugs me. Anyway, check it out if you come across it. Your opinion might be more favorable than mine. It's not a bad film, just not a particularly good one.
st-shot
In The Ballad of the Running Man director Carol Reed steps into the light and fades fast with this placid thriller that takes place in sunny Spain. Far from the dark moody confines of Belfast and post war Vienna Reed's magic touch reacts to the sun like Count Dracula.After pilot Rex Black (Laurence Harvey) crashes his plane and then finds out his insurance policy had lapsed two days earlier he vows to get what's coming to him. With wife Stella (Lee Remick) in on it he feigns drowning and runs off to Spain to await his pay day on a newly issued policy. Before rendezvousing with Rex, Stella is interviewed by an insurance adjuster (Alan Bates) who coincidentally turns up in Spain where he crosses paths with Stella and Rex who has grown a moustache, dyed his hair tangerine and assumed another identity. Stella soon finds herself compromised, further complicating the cat and mouse game.Reed and his magnificent camera man Robert Krasker bring only their reputations to this ho hum suspense that has none of the urgency and tempo of their classic work together. What the sun doesn't expose the flood lights do without a hint of ominous shadowing as Reed's interiors reek of set look and his exteriors travelogue.Bates and Remick slowly build to a decent chemistry but Harvey is over the top and his attempt at an Australian accent comes across like the mother in The Glass Menagerie. The real culprit remains Reed however who also produced the picture which gave him every opportunity to showcase his formidable talent. But from the look of Running Man the accountant has replaced the artist.
lucy-66
I couldn't see anything twee about this film. The script by John Mortimer is excellent (now watch Bunny Lake isMissing). Lee Remick and Alan Bates are great, Lawrence Harveya bit annoying (was he really a sex god?). Sometimes I thought itwould be better as a radio serial as the travelogue background -typical of the 50s and early 60s - is a distraction. But if you stickwith it, the background and the male characters' drab holidayclothes add something. Yes, there are gypsies dancing in thestreets, but their music is repetitive and annnoying and they breakoff to watch ballroom dancing on the telly. And the dancers are notcurvy senoritas but bent old ladies. Cute urchins are mainlyinterested in getting a tip. And the police are as plodding andshabby as any ordinary coppers.Twee? In what way?
Critical Eye UK
About as bad as any British movie can ever get -- and that's saying something -- 'The Running Man' is a 1933 opus with the wrong production date attached.Formulaic, pedestrian, and so Britishly twee, it's also notable for the screen's first display of acute anorexia (when Harvey strips off to go swimming in the sea.)But there is a reason to go to the trouble of seeing this movie, and it's this: 'The Running Man' is a perfect illustration of why the vogue for attributing everything in a movie to the director is, was, and always will be fallacious (blame the French: they're responsible for starting it all).Reed demonstrated his brilliance -- or so we are led to believe -- with The Third Man. Here, he demonstrates what an utter klutz he could be behind the camera.The fact is, when you have a superb Director of Photography, brilliant script, Grade A actors and a wonderful music score (as in The Third Man) then chances are, the film will a success.When you have none of that, and only the director to fall back on, chances are the film will be 'The Running Man'.Another IMDb entry meriting minus 10 out of 10, but for scoring purposes, an overly generous. . . 1.
