Villain

The Leonard Maltin movie guide described this movie as being "nasty" and "stomach-churning". Actually, by today's standards, the level of violence on display here you could probably easily get away with on prime time network television. Anyway, the tame by today's standards violence wasn't an issue with me. The main problem is with the script. The movie starts off fairly well, but quickly becomes very slow and talky, and the dialogue isn't particularly colorful or interesting to grab the viewer. (This problem can be found with a lot of other British movies this age or older.) As for Richard Burton, while his performance here is not one of his worst, it's also not one of his better ones. One problem for him might have been the fact that his character's appearances are somewhat less in number than you might think. This is not an awful movie, but for the most part it's kind of bland and forgettable. If you want to see an early 1970s British crime drama, I would suggest you watch the 1971 Michael Caine movie "Get Carter" instead.