Jack Hawkins

(On Cable TV, June 2021) As far as competent and entertaining crime capers go, The League of Gentlemen feels like a successful prototype of something that would be perfected in later years. The premise of having an ex-military officer recruit fellow veterans to organize and carry out an ambitious robbery is something that would often be reused on both sides of the Atlantic (starting the following year with the Las-Vegas-set Ocean’s Eleven and extending—so far—to 2021’s Wrath of Man), but it’s interesting to see a variation of that formula at that stage of history, clearly playing on the British male audience’s memories of WW2 fellowship and past glories. The production date does mean that they don’t quite get away with a purely happy ending, but no matter — the film is executed with some flair, and the ensemble cast (including Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins and Nigel Patrick) makes it work. The other thing that’s not quite there is the humour of the modern(ish) caper film — as a justifiable lesser crime against rich people and institutions that clearly deserve to redistribute those riches among the poor. You can further evaluate the roughness of the emerging formula by how the supporting players are introduced — not just as veterans, but with a proven track record of deviancy that enables them to commit another crime. Such deviations from the increasingly polished formula of genre movies are what makes films such as The League of Gentlemen so interesting: they play to expectations… up to a point and while the result may frustrate audiences used to the refined formula, it can be interesting to be surprised from time to time.