The League of Gentlemen

What a wonderful short review from Stewart Naunton, above! I thought this was just a sleeper movie that only I appreciated.

The gentlemen in question are men who were very good in the War but not very successful or appreciated between wars. What is more appropriate than that they extract a long-deserved payment by plotting and executing this intricate caper?

This is a movie with a deep moral message. The robbers are in the right, and it is a real shame that these heroes, for heroes they are, have to get nabbed at the end of the film. By rights they should not only have got away with their caper, they should have taken back their country from the small minds and souls that had commandeered it.

"You Never Had It So Good," was Macmillan's slogan in '59, but these ex-officers seem to have missed out on the fun everyone else is having. They have been shabbily treated by their country and you just have to root for them as they recover their talents and daring.

The movie makes a good companion piece for Basil Dearden's 1961 film 'Victim', which is thematically dissimilar but very much the same in appearance and feel.