Not a very well known movie but full of familiar elements of British films of the 50s made by Rank - directed by Ralph Thomas, produced by Betty Box, Anthony Steel as star and Stanley Baker as villain, James Robertson Justice as a tycoon, colour photography, some location shooting in an exotic locale (here Italy).
It's a car racing movie only not really - more car industrial espionage, with Baker working for Justice, trying to obtain plans for a car... which results in him killing some people, which gets this off to a very serious start.
The tone for the film never seems to work - Steel is a car designer/racer envied by Justice, Baker is holed up in an apartment but then escapes, there is lots of driving, some comic relief by support actors. Steel has a romance with Odile Versois, only they used to go out back in the day so we miss out on any wooing, just cut into them kissing, so this feels shallow. And its a convoluted set up to get Baker in the car with Steel.
There are some terrific cars, pleasing scenery and professional work from old hands such as Baker and Justice. Steel does his handsome leading man thing, in a part that could have easily been essayed by Dirk Bogarde - at least playing a racing car driver was different. Pleasing enough entertainment.
3 comments:
Could some of the shots/ film come from the 1956 Mille Miglia (1000 mile road race) in Italy? Too many great cars to be a studio production
Quite a bit of information about the making of Checkpoint in Betty Box's autobiography-can't remember the book's title but still available. A technician was badly hurt by one of the race cars, she recounts, and her own DB2 was in some shots.
Hi Jon - yes I have read that since posting my review. I got the sense it was a project the Box-Thomas team chiefly made so they could shoot a film in Italy that incorporated racing car footage - it's the highlight of the movie, rather than the script!
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