malcolmgsw This is a film which I can never remember seeing on TV.Unfortunately it seems as relevant today as when it was made as there have been terrorist campaigns since and sadly at this present time.However what is so ironic about this film is that people were lead ,wrongly to believe,that the security services were on top of the situation,whereas Burgess,MacLean and Ogilvy were happily giving secrets away to the Soviets.Of course they couldn't be guilty,they went to Oxbridge.The film is extremely well written and directed.

Robert J. Maxwell There's a moment that seems to sum up the emotional tonus of this story of Commie espionage in London. Anthony Bushell has been sent undercover by Scotland Yard to investigate some avant-garde musical society that seems somehow connected to a terrible explosion at the docks.When the chief Scotland Yard investigator, Redmond, initially asks Bushell if he has any interest in music, Bushell replies dead-pan, "Why, do you need help moving a piano?" Bushell, undercover, attends a meeting of the society after joining it, and he sits in the audience, arms folded, while the speaker introduces a piece for a string trio that was the composer's "first effort -- and also his last." Yes, the music they play is very dramatic, the speaker tells us, but underneath there is lyricism and "some jolly good tunes." On stage, the trio launch into a lugubrious cascade of clashing chords that might sound appropriate if you were watching some kind of pop version of Dracula while on mushrooms. It dissolves your basilar membranes. It fuses your middle ear. The two violins moan and the cellist is going ape, throwing his hair wildly around. Well, Bushell has a face that's about as interesting as a hard-boiled egg, but his features twist into first horror, then disbelief as the flood of dissonance flows on and he rest of the audience sits rapt. I found the scene hilarious, and it didn't strike me as an imitation of Hitchcock in any way.The whole movie is like that. The events are serious indeed -- Soviet agents at work blowing up London -- but the dialog is quick and witty and layered over with a kind of strictly British humor -- or I should say "humour" -- that's hard to define. When the inspectors unexpectedly discover a murdered spy, one of them glances at it and says, "Hello." You never find this sort of stuff on "Law and Order" but you can find good examples in films like "Mona Lisa." And, though there are wisecracks in abundance in most American cop movies, they sound hyperbolic and slightly coarse.I'm skipping over the plot because, like most espionage and spy thrillers, it's pretty complicated. Men in overcoats following suspicious women in heels across city streets. Basically, it's a story of Redmond, Morrell, Bushell, and the rest incrementally pinning down the Red Menace, who might as well be gangsters as far as the dynamics are concerned. Some of the heavies are rough guys, some are pathetic sissies, a clerk in a bowler looks like T. S. Eliot, and the one at the top is suavely evil -- not much originality there. It's a serious movie. The Reds are all bastards. They kill one another without remorse if it moves the cause one step forward.The performances are all fine, except when the actors are hobbled by stereotypical roles. There's nothing special about the direction but the climactic confrontation is agreeably noirish -- all those wet cobblestone streets glistening under the lamps -- and the shoot out is well staged and exciting.

Michael Neumann An otherwise workmanlike British thriller with familiar overtones of anti-Communist paranoia is salvaged by a lively script that underplays the bellicose propagandizing of other, similar witch-hunts. The emphasis instead is on action and character and some colorful local dialogue, as a network of saboteurs infiltrates the highest (and lowest) levels of democracy with nefarious plots to undermine England's power structure. The enemy agents are never precisely identified (it's clear who they are long before the authorities catch them 'Red' handed), and of course they're no match for the stiff upper lips of Scotland Yard, although it takes an extended gun battle at the Battersea power station to prove it. The film was less flattering and thus less popular than its predecessor, 'Seven Days to Noon', but seen today it remains an enjoyable, well-crafted relic from the warmer days of the Cold War.

davelom A really splendid Cold War thriller full of good London location shots showing scenes in the capital that have sadly gone forever.There are no star names,just first rate character players some of whom no British films are complete without. Special mention should be made of the Irish actor Liam Redmond who wonderfully underplays his role as the Commander with his dry wit and quizzical smile.To me, this is possibly his best film. It seems such a great shame that this film is seldom (if ever) shown on Britsh TV. I came across it in a second hand shop issued as part of a British Classics video collection. It's a great pity that this superb picture is not more well known.