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The Gentle Gunman

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The Gentle Gunman
Directed byBasil Dearden
Written byRoger MacDougall
Produced byBasil Dean
Michael Relph
StarringJohn Mills
Dirk Bogarde
CinematographyGordon Dines
Edited byPeter Tanner
Music byJohn Greenwood
Distributed byUniversal-International (USA)
Release dates
October 1952 (UK)
30 September 1953 (U.S.)
Running time
86 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The Gentle Gunman is a black-and-white 1952 Ealing Studios drama film, directed by Basil Dearden and starring John Mills and Dirk Bogarde.

Plot

John Mills and Dirk Bogarde, bizarrely, were the actors chosen to play two IRA men under cover in London during World War II. The lads are captured after (Terry) starts questioning the worth of war, a line of thinking never popular with armies. They are sprung from captivity by Connolly (Liam Redmond) and his IRA men. Nice cameo by Jack McGowran.

Cast

Critical reception

The British magazine Time Out thought the film was "stiff" and "overplotted",[1] while the British Film Institute thought the film struggled to "find the right tone" and culminated with a "car-crash of an ending".[2] The New York Times thought that the film had "failed to search beneath the surface" of the screen-play and described much of the content as "superficial".[3]

References

  1. ^ "The Gentle Gunman". Time Out. Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  2. ^ "Gentle Gunman, The (1952)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  3. ^ "The Gentle Gunman (1952)". British Film Institute. 1 October 1953. Retrieved 28 May 2014.