The best thing about this film is the music by Harry Sukman, a name I have never seen before. It is romantic and moody and very remindful of "Dangerous Moonlight" and the Warsaw Concerto, like being almost an effort to reach the same kind of Rachmaninov passion, but there is no passion in this film, Frank Sinatra's wife is long since dead, and his son's adventure in Leipzig leads to some passion on Sinatra's part but rather of murder and fury than anything else. The plot is overdone and rather screwed up, and Peter Vaughan on the screen always has a capacity of giving you the creeps - his vibrations are always thoroughly unpleasant, and here he is the director of the murder plot. A very young Edward Fox is seen as a minor character, perhaps preparing to make the jackal. There is something of the same stylishness here as in Sidney J. Furie's earlier film "The Ipcress File", but here the script is poorer. In Ipcress you had no chance of getting any idea of what really was going on until the last moment, but here everything is nakedly clear from the beginning - to everyone, except to poor Frank Sinatra, who is amazingly unaware of how he is being manipulated. He makes a good performance as usual, but the script and plot here were not really worthy of him - most of his films are much better.
Review of The Naked Runner
