The Criminal (1960) on Netflix
Paroled after three years inside, Johnny Bannion plans a racetrack robbery he expects to bring in £40,000. He works with his partner, the well-connected American Mike Carter.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.8/101,984 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Johnny Bannion is a career criminal who keeps an entourage of minor crooks and fast girls. Paroled after three years in prison, he sets about planning his comeback: a robbery at a racetrack that he expects to bring in £40,000. He works on it with his partner Mike Carter, a well-connected American. The track answers to a different owner, a gangster, and Bannion does not know it.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Criminal (1960)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was initially banned in Ireland, which Joseph Losey attributed to so many of the prisoners being Irish Catholics.
- Joseph Losey said he was handed a ready-made script he called a concoction of every prison film Hollywood ever made, and that he and Stanley Baker refused to work until the producers let them write their own script, which they did.
- According to Losey, Johnny Bannion was modeled on the real-life Soho gangster Albert Dimes, whom Stanley Baker knew, and the prison mob boss Frank Saffron was patterned after Charles Sabini.
- Losey said the producers wanted a sequence showing the racetrack robbery, but he thought Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956) had already done that, so he filmed it happening off screen.
- The Criminal was the screen debut of several of its actors, among them Patrick Magee, Murray Melvin, Roy Dotrice, Neil McCarthy and Derek Francis.
