BELLMAN AND TRUE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Enjoyable heist film from England has a
plot that should interest engineers. Not a bad little film,
if not up to some of the crime films that have come from
Britain of late. Unfortunately, the soundtrack is indistinct
and much of the dialogue is lost. Rating: +1.
One tends to think of the United States for crime films. (I distinguish between crime films and detective films; a crime film is seen mostly from the criminal's point of view.) Having had a large piece of English-speaking crime, we have also been readier to make crime films than has England. yet there have always been a number of modest little crime films made in England. Films like LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, THE LONG ARM, THE LAVENDER HILL MOB, and THE LADYKILLERS have been likable but have not gotten much attention. More recently some better films have been made, including THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY and MONA LISA. BELLMAN AND TRUE is a throwback to the earlier, more modest British heist films.
Bernard Hill plays Hiller, an electronics systems analyst who has accepted a 1000-pound advance to pas bank data to some criminals. Unable to deliver the data in any form but on magnetic tape, he runs away, only to be kidnapped (along with his stepson) by the people he was fleeing. They want more than their money back: they want an electronics expert to help them rob a bank. The film is about evenly divided between the story of the heist and Hiller's relationship with his son as they are caught up in the robbery scheme.
Frankly, being an engineer myself, I have a fondness for films in which engineering plays an important part and even tips the scales. THE DAM BUSTERS--one of my favorite war films--is as much a film about solving wartime engineering problems as it is about soldiering. In a sense engineering is the core of F/X. Engineering plays as big a role in this heist film as it does in the very enjoyable Australian heist film MALCOLM. One sequence in the film, in fact, appears to be a direct theft from MALCOLM. In a few places, the engineering in BELLMAN AND TRUE seems to have gotten the facts wrong or underestimated the time to put together a sophisticated piece of toy robotics, but that can be forgiven.
The serious engineering problems, and the reason I really have to qualify my recommendation, is in the production, not the story. The simple fact is that the film needed subtitles. I had little trouble cutting through the thick Cockney accents of THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY or MONA LISA. But I missed just too darn much of BELLMAN AND TRUE because the soundtrack seemed muddled. there are some clever and witty lines in the film, but some can be made out only by comparing notes with others. So as much of the film as I could understand I rate a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
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