Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

boblipton Before he directed what seemed like thirty-five billion "Carry On" burlesques, Gerald Thomas directed this film, a simple drama about what happens when a small boy gets locked in a bank vault with a time lock set for over sixty hours -- and about ten hours' worth of air. It's from a play written by Arthur Hailey, and considering what the director would do, and Hailey's admiration of the AIRPLANE! burlesques of AIRPORT, based on his novel, it makes you wonder what a Carry On this would have made.As a straight drama, it's a pretty good, if minor picture, filled with the sort of situations and characters that would populate Hailey's big novels, the movies made from them and the Disaster Movie genre. Allen Gifford is particularly good as the bank manager who works hard to get the child out, and constantly blames himself.If I had any complaint, it is that it is too focused. Everyone is too focused, everyone is too polite. This, however, is not THE BIG CARNIVAL, nor AIRPORT nor CARRY ON, KID STUCK IN A BANK VAULT. For the story it tries to tell, it tells it well.

sharpe04 I remember seeing this movie on TV in the USA in 1961 when I was a nipper, it's always stuck in my mind, I have no idea why. Watched it again recently on TV, probably in the small hours, must've had insomnia. Not the worst 1950s B feature I've ever seen.Reference the helicopter, as the film was made in the UK I'm pretty sure it was G-AKFB, with the registration crudely altered to a Canadian one. There were only 3 Bell 47s around in the forties/fifties according to the UK register, the only one apparently airworthy in 1957 was this one, which was then owned by BEA Helicopters. It was built in 1947 and was finally withdrawn from use in 1967, not a bad age for an early helicopter. I must get out more!

donaldagont I remember seeing this film on TV when I was a teenager. I have just seen it again 20 years on and like me it has aged. As one reviewer says the characters are a microcosm of society and it is a world I wouldn't want to live in. The cop, the expert, the bank manager are unbelievably rude, bullying, and cruelly insensitive. The acting is poor and hardly credible. Even Sean Connery chews his dialogue (on this showing it seems a marvel that he reinvented himself as James Bond only four years later). The boy is as wooden as a barn door with his repeated "Yes, Daddy." He even grins at the camera at one point. Surely they could have found someone of Dean Stockwell's or Pamela Franklin's abilities. The parents are predictably bland, the mother plays the hysterical part as usual. Beatty is OK as the main star and dominates as he should but his bullying of the volunteers is over the top and uncalled for. Someone ought to have given him a bloody nose after all the fuss was over. As for the bank manager his forelock was hanging down more or less from the start.The situation was promising and there is no doubt that the film is exciting, especially the use of statistics to heighten the tension. Unfortunately the performances let it down and the dialogue is at times laughable (perhaps the future "Carry On" director was getting some practice in). Also it doesn't seem credible that when the radio man said he wanted to put the story on the news that it didn't occur to the cop or the bank manager to tell him to use the stations to locate the expert. Instead this idea came from the journalist about three minutes later. Again the cop calculates the car journey time for the expert to get to the bank when my first thought would have been to get him on a helicopter. Again someone else suggested this. The selection for the hammering is like something out of the keystone cops. When the priest turned up, I thought, who next, the one-armed bandit? Why is the film based in North America, when it was made at Beaconsfield? The time bomb plot is usually handled better and the director makes a real mess of the tension. The film has sadly dated - but it is always watchable, even allowing for the shoddy direction and acting.

sol- Although the plot feels rather forced and awfully predictable, this is a surprisingly quite intense film that is able to keep one always interested all the time, due to the presentation of all the scientific evidence in an interesting manner, as well as an appropriately short running time. It feels well researched, the music used is applied well, and for Sean Connery fans it has the bonus of his presence in a brief supporting role as a welder. Still, the film does have quite a tendency for unnecessary melodrama; in particular McDowall overacts whenever she is on screen. But in spite of the film's flaws, the overall picture stands strong, and while it might not be everyone's cup of tea, I would highly recommend it if the film has even the slightest appeal to one's taste.