Redundant and unnecessary.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT is a disappointment in way of casting and direction. Anatole Litvak tries to give the improbable twists of the story some conviction but neither SOPHIA LOREN nor ANTHONY PERKINS are up to the job. Furthermore, the plot has the woman making such foolish decisions that it's hard to take the plot seriously.Loren gets all the loving close-ups her fans would want while going through some agonizing predicaments but never does her acting seem like more than acting. Perkins gets to slap her around and come up with some wise-cracking insults when he discovers she's been unfaithful to him, but it too seems too much like acting because he's simply miscast as a brute.Even the usually reliable GIG YOUNG looks as though he decided to phone this one in, so unconvincing is his role. The telegraphed ending fails to convince and seems more like a contrivance of the script writer than a logical outcome to the story, even though Loren tries hard to show her anguished mental state.All of it has the look of a low-budget film hastily put together without any distinctive touches. It would probably work better as a half-hour teleplay, the kind that TV frequently produced during the '60s.

***SPOILERS*** Transplanted former US airman Robert Macklin, Anthony Perkins, and his sexy Italian wife Lisa, Sophia Loren, have been having their material problems in the city of lights Paris France with Robert suspecting his wife of cheating on him. It's not that Robert's suspicions are unfounded in that Lisa has been having an affair with American newspaper reporter Alan Stewart, Jean-Pierrie Aumont, whom she plans to take off with after a divorce from a very reluctant Robert. Robert knows what he's got, ultra sexy film star Sophia Loren, and isn't that willing to give her up without a fight!It's then that two things happen in the film that changes it's entire completion or storyline. Alan is transfered back to New York City and Robert is killed in a plane crash on his way to Casablanca for a job interview! Or so it seems!As things turn out Alan is replaced by his newspaper by David Barnes, Gig Young, who's even more hotter for Lisa then even Alan or her late husband Robert is. As for Robert he somehow survived the plane crash, by landing on his head, when he was flung from the aircraft before it hit the ground! Coming back home to as shocked Lisa, who felt that she finally was rid of him, Robert forces her to file a life insurance claim for $120,000.00 that Robert made out for himself before he boarded the doomed plane. Despite having all the cards in her favor, all she had to do is go the the insurance company and tell them that her dead husband was in fact alive, Lisa does as Robert asks her to do thus making herself an accomplice in Robert's issuance fraud scheme! As for the dying to jump into the sack with Lisa David Barnes he in his sniffing out her apartment, as well as Lisa herself, comes to the realization that Robert is in fact alive and plans to use that information to get Lisa to go on a date with him just to start the ball, in finally getting her to say "I Do", rolling!***SPOILERS**** You would have expected more form a movie with top stars like Sophia Loren Anthony Perkins and Gig Young in it but it comes across like a run of the mill made for TV cheesy forbidden romance revenge flick! You would have at least expected at one time in the movie, just to keep from from nodding off, to see Lisa or Miss Loren take her clothes off and show off her impressive vital statistics, 38-24-37, but she's fully clothes during he entire lengths of the film! All we have left is Lisa trying to somehow get Robert off her back in committing a crime far worse, that can end up getting her shot at sunrise, then the insurance fraud that he was blackmailing her into doing!As for the love sick David Barnes he blows his big chance in getting it on with Lisa by not only finding out her criminal involvement with Robert but having her give herself up to the Paris Police for it! Where in the future the only way David can see her, if in fact she want's to see him, is behind bars on visiting day in prison!

The first thing that will strike viewers as strange is the title. Is "Five Miles To Midnight" a common expression? If so, I've never heard of it before. Anyway, placed next to the movie, it doesn't make that much sense, even though a character in the movie does say the title out loud at one point. If they had used the Charles Bronson title "10 To Midnight", it would have made a bit more sense.The second thing that will be strange to viewers is the pairing of Anthony Perkins and Sophia Loren. True, they were paired together as a romantic couple a few years earlier in "Desire Under The Elms", but reportedly that worked as well as it does here. How a beauty in the form of Loren could be attracted to the nervous, boyish Perkins is hard to swallow, to say the least.But even if the title was fixed AND they got two lead actors with better (and believable) chemistry together, I think the movie still wouldn't have worked. I could see this story being told as a short graphic story in the comic "Tales From The Crypt". I could see this story working as a half-hour episode (with commercials) of a show like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Or even as a full hour. But this telling of the story lasts about 110 minutes. It's VERY slow-moving, full of padding like the stuff with the little nosy boy. Plus, the ending of the movie is very predictable - I guessed what would happen after reading the plot synopsis before actually starting the movie.Far from the worst movie I've seen, but still not worth seeing. Trust me, you've seen this story before one way or another.

Certainly Anatole Litvak was no slouch as a director, but he missed the mark here in "Five Miles to Midnight," a 1962 film starring Sophia Loren, Tony Perkins and Gig Young.Lisa Macklin (Sophia Loren) married to an American, believes that her husband (Tony Perkins) has been killed in an airplane crash. Actually, he was a survivor and wants to collect $120,000 in insurance he took out before the flight by pretending to be dead. Of course, his wife has to collect it. The two don't exactly get along, and the only way to be rid of him is for Lisa to collect the money for him. She is falling for a newspaperman (Young), who is suspicious as to what is going on. Her husband promises he will let her go once he has the money.This is a very unsatisfactory film, in part because of the miscasting of Tony Perkins as Loren's husband. Not only that, but the acting just isn't very good even from pros like Loren, Perkins and Young. Litvak only made two more films after this - it appears he lost his touch after making some marvelous films: This Above All, All This and Heaven Too, Tovarich, City for Conquest. Either that or he had to make too many concessions. At any rate, he didn't pay too much attention to what the actors were doing. The story just meanders along. Not very good.