John Thornton

I saw this movie in the cinema with my grandmother in the year of release, when I was nine years old. It was brilliant: I recall feeling really angry at Lloyd Bridges’ character’s selfishness in hampering Coop, by putting him through a fistfight. And the sheer tension as clocks ticked towards noon. Grace Kelly’s Quaker antipathy to violence being finally overcome to ‘even up’ the odds against Coop. And finally the ‘tin star’ being dropped into the dust on the street, as a gesture of exasperation at the townspeople’s collective cowardice. And, wrapping it all in its taught, insistent rhythm was Dimitri Tiomkin’s ‘Do not forsake me, oh my darling’, sung by Tex Ritter. Wow! What a movie! 👍👍

It’s just brilliant: the dialogue is even better than Aaron Sorkin! Grippingly twisty plot development and laugh-out-loud funny repartee almost simultaneously.

Gritty: more impressive than ‘Underbelly’.

I’m enjoying it for what it is, but what isn’t is a faithful adaptation of the original Ipcress novel. Stok belongs in ‘Funeral in Berlin’, Jean would never ‘go into the field’, the unnamed Harry is a Capt (T/Maj) who has had an honourable War record in WW2 & grew up in the Midlands, possibly Burnley, Lancs, Chico is a chinless, gormless, upper class twit… I could go on but I’v only seen 2 eps. By the way, 7plus are butchering this with aimless ads, increasing in frequency as each ep. goes on. BritBox step up please!