Escape Route

Escape Route is a low budget quickie with ageing US star George Raft as Steve Rossi.

Rossi shows up in London, skipping the immigration queue and looking for an old friend called Grand.

Grand is elusive and wants to stay that way. Rossi is in fact a FBI agent who is investigating a gang kidnapping western scientists and taking them to Eastern Europe. Rossi teams up with the British secret service agent Joan Miller (Sally Gray) to apprehend Grand.

Raft looks a bit stiff and the romance with his younger star Sally Gray looks a bit ikky.

The film is ponderous, the title of the movie makes no sense. It is efficient but the plot seems all over the place with no tension or thrills.

I've seen Raft in many movies, and just don't get why people liked him so much. His acting is wooden, not just here, but in many roles. He's not particularly handsome nor charismatic. But whatever.

I like this movie because it's what we yanks consider a hollywood genre, but set and shot in the UK. It's refreshing to see a procedural done in another country. Similar, but different. And plenty of on location and street shots, not just endless soundstages. The camerawork even has a few imaginative moments.

But it's not special in any other way. I'm pretty good with british acting names and faces, and I don't recognize one here. It's rare that I recognize only one performer in a movie, in this case, Raft. I didn't previously know Sally Gray. I found it hard not to watch her. To me she looks much more american than british for that time period.

This could be a good movie for an update, a remake. It's got good bones.

This is being advertised as part of a film noir collection. Its is definitely not noir. It is a cheap B&W second run British post-war espionage mystery. It has some very good London exteriors showing WWII bombed out building, streets, and vintage cars but that's about it. George Raft is his usual upright, erect, suave self and the story is hokey, naturally there is a female romantic interest thrown in as usual formula but it is not objectionable or at all a waste of time, it's a good display of a has-been American actor on the cheap to a a thrifty British production and that's all. It is watchable, you don't want to turn it off, so see it for what it is without any high expectations.

Another quota quickie British film of the fifties. This is one of literally hundreds of films that had an American actor in the leading role purely as a way of getting a release in the USA.

George Raft stars as an FBI agent sent over to Britain to find out how, why and where leading scientists are being abducted and taken East.

Raft, obviously at the twilight of his career, looks a little bored with the whole thing. Judging by his square shoulders, he seems to have left his coat hanger in his overcoat and his arms seem to be glued to his sides. His leading lady, quite a bit younger than him, also seems uneasy of smooching an older man!

Using schoolboy spy techniques they uncover the spy ring and Raft gets the girl. An undemanding film that passes the short running time.

In one of his Lippert Pictures George Raft shot this one in London where he plays an FBI agent on the trail of some scientists who've been kidnapped in various western countries and presumably taken to the Soviet Union to work for the other side. To accomplish his mission Raft has to team up with Sally Gray of British Intelligence who is both pretty and useful.

By that I mean anyone who could reverse a custody situation and get George Raft in a hammerlock has to be a girl you can get serious about when the mission is completed.

Even though the film isn't quite 80 minutes it moves along at a ponderous pace. Raft looked bored throughout the film, his paycheck must have cleared and he was going through the motions. His days as a top star were over and he was reduced to Poverty Row Lippert Pictures to get enough money to pay that huge tax bill Uncle Sam was smacking him with.

Clifford Evans as the mastermind of the kidnappings had some interesting moments. But the film is definitely mediocre.