Very Cool!!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Hunted is directed by Charles Crichton, has a screenplay by Jack Whittington and stars Dirk Bogarde, Jon Whiteley, Elizabeth Sellers and Geoffrey Keen.Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde) discovers his wife (Elizabeth Sellers) is having an affair and he confronts the other man about it on a derelict building site and kills him. Unbeknown to him a small boy called Robbie (Jon Whiteley)is hiding there and witnesses the crime. Lloyd takes him and the pair go on the run. They are pursued by a Police Inspector (Geoffrey Keen). At first Lloyd is very quick tempered and is annoyed with Robbie but as they spend more time together the pair come to care for one another. Robbie comes from an abusive foster home and doesn't want to go back there.Bogarde is superb as the quick tempered and desperate man who despite his crime is not a monster. He goes through a real character change. As the film progresses he really begins to care for the boy and he's really gentle with him. The scene where Robbie asks him to tell him a story is very moving, especially when we realise Lloyd's telling the boy about what happened between him and his wife.Whiteley is excellent considering how young he is. He does a good job of conveying his fear of being touched (due to his abusive home life)and how he just wants some kindness in his life. You really feel sorry for him especially when Robbie and Lloyd become so attached because you know in reality this film can't have a happy ending.What this film does so well is make you feel the desperation, the fear and the difficulty of being on the run. Heavily populated places aren't safe because Lloyd could be recognised, every time he shows his face to try and get food or somewhere to stay for the night is a risk. As the film goes on Lloyd and Robbie become like two animals running from a pack of hunters. We want them both to escape and be happy with one another, yet we know that Lloyd's crime must be punished and that the film can only end in tears. Lloyd's decision on the boat for the sake of Robbie is enough to make anyone shed a tear.An excellent and poignant thriller that's a must see for Bogarde fans. Tiger Bay (1959)is another film very similar to this and is highly recommended if you enjoyed Hunted.

This film has the feeling of having been extensively edited.There seems to be the first reel missing.Bogarde and the boy are on the bomb site without any explanation,this now has to come late in explanatory dialogue.After starting out to be a standard fugitive film it develops into a sort of reverse 39 Steps.The problem is that with each step taken by Bogarde his reason for keeping the boy seems even more implausible..After all since he will be having a date with Albert Pierrepoint you would think that the last thing he would want to be lumbered with is a child.I am no fan of films featuring young children,of which there were many in the 1859s.So I am afraid that I found this film to be a bit of a pain.

***SPOILERS*** The most unusual thing about this movie is that the person who's really the center of attraction and the reason all that happens in it someone called Mr.Wills isn't even in the films credits and isn't even, as far as I can see, played by a living person or actor but by a store front mannequin. It's in this bombed out building, during the London Blitz, that we see sailor Chris Lloyd, Dirk Bogarde, together with this six year old runaway little Robbie Campball, Jon Whiteley,just shooting the breeze where in the foreground we see this stiff, Mr. Willis, laying on the ground in the early stages of rigor mortis. How he, Willis, got there and what caused his condition, being dead, were never really told only that Lloyd's wife Megda, Elizabeth Sellars, worked for Willis who was getting a little too friendly with her.With all that behind us were then shown that Robbie is on the run from his foster parents because in him playing with matches he almost set the house on fire and is afraid that his step-dad Mr. Campbell, Jack Stewart, will beat the living hell out of him when he finds out about it. From then on both Lloyd & Robbie are on the run from the police as well as Mr. Campbell until they reach this seaside town in Scotland and plan to sea-jack a boat and check or sail out to safety in Ireland. It's while on the lamb that Lloyd becomes very attached to Robbie in that he feels that he's in far more trouble then he is. Not having a home to go home to and parents to love him Lloyd who had first had little use for Robbie starts to show real affection towards the little boy.***SPOILERS*** The love and affection that Lloyd shows for Robbie really hits home when on their way to Ireland Robbie falls deathly ill because of the raw and possibly rotten eggs that Lloyd has been giving him to eat and decides to turn the boat around back to Scotland and eventually face justice in the murder of Wills for reasons were never really given by the films screenwriters. What I couldn't quite understand is why Wills, who seemed to be well off financially, was in that bombed out building in the first place? That unless if Lloyd did murder him had dragged his body there to keep the police from finding it.

Very good, gritty British drama, with an excellent Dirk Bogarde as the murderer on the run who becomes a father figure to an abused child. Director Charles Crichton captures working class life and Britain, from the bleak city streets to the countryside, very well. Bogarde's scenes with the child actor Jon Whiteley are incredibly touching, and most importantly, feel inherently real. These two have such an incredible screen chemistry, that the viewer totally believes their relationship. Once again Bogarde proves himself one of the finest of all actors to grace the screen. This little British film, which obviously influenced the later, just as good "Tiger Bay" (with the child being replaced with a girl, one Hayley Mills), deserves to be better known.