Payroll (1962)

Best movie of this year hands down!

People are voting emotionally.

I wanted to but couldn't!

A Masterpiece!

I had quite high hopes for this British crime film. "Payroll" has promise without being exactly unpredictable or creative in the plot department. Unfortunately, I found this film to be mainly tedious and uneventful. A poor narrative doesn't exactly help. A good cast has gone to waste. Billie Whitelaw - a fine actress - has next to nothing to do throughout the whole story. She swears vengeance against the gang in question but spends most of her time in twiddling her thumbs! The opening 20 minutes is pretty good. After the robbery scene though, it is downhill all the way. The film just seems to plod along aimlessly. The running time of 105 minutes is far too long and should have been about 15 minutes shorter. The bloke who played the investigating police officer is absolutely hopeless! He has no screen presence, no charisma and is so wooden you could knock nails into him. Where was John Gregson when he was needed?? He would have made something of the same role. "Payroll" is supposed to be set in Newcastle. However, there is no one who can put on a reasonably convincing Geordie accent. Definitely not worth seeing again.

Payroll is directed by Sidney Hayers and adapted to screenplay by George Baxt from the novel written by Derek Bickerton. It stars Michael Craig, Françoise Prévost, Billie Whitelaw, William Lucas, Kenneth Griffith, Tom Bell and Barry Keegan. Music is by Reg Owen and cinematography by Ernest Steward. A vicious gang of crooks raid an armoured van carrying the wages of the local factory. When all doesn't go to plan and the driver of the van is killed, the gang start to come apart from within, just as the police and a vengeful widow close in on them... As tough as old boots! Out of Beaconsfield Studios, Payroll is the kind of British neo-noir that is adored by those that have seen it and yet it still remains a sleeper. Set up in the North East of England in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, there's a real sense of working class struggle pulsing through the picture. The character dynamics at work are nothing new in the history of the heist gone wrong movie, but the makers here insert two ladies into the equation and let them be prominent antagonists, and with some conviction as well. Time is afforded build up of characters, letting us into home lives and the planning of the crime, and then bam! It's the robbery and it pulls no punches. Story is not without violence, and murders are coldly executed, and as the band of thieves begin to crack, led by ice cold scumbag Johnny Mellors (Craig), director Hayers puts them into a world of grim alleyways, terrace houses, back street pubs, sweat stained garages, marshy bogs and an imposing dockside ripe for a denouement. The mood is firmly set at fatalistic realism, and as Hayers tightens the noose around the dwindling gang of thieves, and Reg Owen's jazzy score flits around the drama (love that ominous double bass), we are led to a wholly satisfactory conclusion. Cast are great, especially the wonderful Whitelaw, and Steward's photography is crisp and on the money. 8/10 Footnote: Some scenes were filmed in Rugby, Warwickshire, so it's not exclusively on location in Newcastle. And of course as any Geordie will tell you, there's a distinct lack of Geordie accents in the picture.

An underrated British film about naive working class criminals. I agree with previous comments regarding the miscasting of Michael Craig, but he was a prominent British leading man so it is understandable that he was chosen for box-office appeal. (Today,one would perhaps cast Albert Finney.) I actually worked on the movie as an extra and met most of the actors. I was particularly impressed with Tom Bell having followed his work in TV plays. He was a young actor who represented the up and coming crop of actors such as Finney, Bates, Lynch and Courteny. Although the film is an excellent record of 60's Newcastle, several scenes were shot in Rugby, where I lived. It was interesting to see how the Rugby scenes were edited into the Newcastle settings. I have a copy on tape.

There has never,in my view been a blander,more anodyne leading man in British cinema than Michael Craig,and his faintly ludicrous performance as a "hard man"drags this movie down into the depths. It is about a botched payroll robbery during which an unplanned fatality occurs.The widow of the deceased sets out to track down the culprits The always watchable Billie Whitelaw and Kenneth Griffith contribute effective performances,as does William Lucas, but they are fighting a losing battle against a woeful script and a miscast lead duo in Craig and Francois Prevost The British cinema then was too middle class and genteel to do this kind of thing well and it is little more than a period curiosity for today,s audiences