The Gentle Gunman


The Gentle Gunman is a 1952 British drama film directed by Basil Dearden and starring John Mills, Dirk Bogarde and Elizabeth Sellars. It was written by Roger MacDougall based on his 1950 play of the same title that was televised by the BBC in September 1950. It was produced by Ealing Studios. The film's sets were designed by the art director Jim Morahan.

Plot

Terence and Matthew Sullivan are two Irish [Republican Army |IRA] men in London during World War II. Terry starts questioning the worth of the IRA's war against the United Kingdom that involves planting bombs in a crowded London Underground station and becomes marked for death by the IRA. In addition to Terry's questioning of the IRA's methods, Matt is affected by a mother whose husband and son had joined the IRA with fatal results. Though Matthew escapes capture in London, his comrades-in-arms Connolly and Patsy are captured by the British police. Both Terry and the IRA leader Shinto vow to free the men and take them from their trial in Belfast to safety in the Irish Free State, but Shinto favours more violent methods than Terry.

Cast

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The Gentle Gunman does not suffer from such familiar weaknesses of filmed theatre as restricted sets and excessive dialogue; rather, the stage original has been broken down so that climaxes come at moments of violence, and the flavour of the picture is primarily that of a thriller. But in spite of this the film retains a certain theatrical artificiality, notably in the last scenes, and the insistence on action has itself resulted in a scrappy organisation of the material and in a dissipation and lack of force in the presentation of the central theme."
Time Out stated the film was "stiff" and "overplotted".
Philip Kemp of the British Film Institute thought the film struggled to "find the right tone" and culminated with a "car-crash of an ending".
The [New York Times] indicated that the film had "failed to search beneath the surface" of the screen-play and described much of the content as "superficial".