Juvenile delinquents were a bit of a craze in late 40s British cinema - Brighton Rock, The Blue Lamp, Good Time Girl and this, among others, gave plenty of wayward teens for audiences to go tsk tsk at, and enable socially progressive filmmakers to push their agenda. This one is set in a borstal institute, the Brits equivalent of juvey, run by the humane but dull Jack Warner and his humane but dull assistants - and I know this is my warped twentieth century mind but I can't help wondering if the characters they play in real life would be molesting these kids.
It's a bit of a star line up - Richard Attenborough is a nervy, dim teen crook who gets busted driving a getaway car (it's a version of his In Which We Serve coward performance). Dirk Bogarde is clearly experienced but very effective as a manipulative, handsome prisoner with a regional accent - yes, years before The Servant Bogarde was impressing in manipulative roles. Jimmy Hanley is good but he seems too old with his pot belly and receding hairline - indeed, most of the prisoners seemed too old.
As melodrama this isn't bad - Hanley gets out of prison and falls for Attenborough's girl, there's a quite exciting escape sequence in the finale. Some of this is laughable, though - Bogarde's amateur hour theatrics when he has his breakdown at the end, Hanley walking around with shorts pulled up like he's a sixty year old Queenslander at a bowls club, the final chat by Warden and his mate about the wheat and the chaff. (Actually every scene involving Warden and the guards is bad and self-righteous).
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