Leofwine_draca
THE MARKED ONE is a low rent British crime feature from the prolific Francis Searle, a man who always attempted to make the best of his limited resources and talents. This has interesting locations and a casting director with a good eye for interesting faces. The underrated William Lucas plays a former jailbird and the only man who knows the location of some stolen forgery plates. His former gang members are desperate to get them back and the police are in hot pursuit too.Truth be told, this is the kind of serviceable story that we saw play out over and over again in this much-maligned genre, but THE MARKED ONE clocks in at just an hour in length and never feels boring or overly familiar. Lucas is a good enough actor to make us feel for his character, especially when he faces adversity and ruin at every turn. It's no classic, that's for sure, but there's enough suspense here to make this worth a look.
John Driscoll
Some very well acted scenes. William Lucas and Zena Walker play off each other wonderfully.The director Francis A. Searle made great use of location shots, including: 'The Pilot' public house and Brentford Dock, Brentford, Middlesex,England, UK.This stems from Searle's work at Gaumont-British where he joined their instructional unit and made documentaries. This coupled with outstanding cinematography adds a feel of documentary and realism.You feel for Lucas's character ; Don Mason. One twist after another. Unexpected punchline.Summary; Watch and enjoy! I'm sure you will! Excellent!
malcolmgsw
This is a British Crime thriller which manages to long outstay its welcome despite the fact that it only lasts just over one hour.Lucas plays a lorry driver who is recently out of prison.It appears that he either has or knows where he can find plates for making forged banknotes.For this reason he is a very popular or unpopular man,The scriptwriter seems to have decided to throw in as many elements as he can think of for this type of thriller with the result that it is an unexciting mess.Furthermore it is not that difficult to work out the identity of the mysterious threatening voice on the telephone.Despite the fact that this film was made at MGM Borehamwood studios the production looks threadbare and poverty stricken.The producer is Tom Blakely so presumably this film had some connection with Mancunian Studios.