The Mackintosh Man - 1973 film review

Desmond Bagley was a very good thriller writer. My Dad was a big fan of his novels, and although I never met Bagley (who was always known as Simon to his friends) I did meet his widow Joan, an extremely pleasant lady who lived in Guernsey and who remained in touch with the crime writing world after her husband's regrettably early death at the age of 59. One of his best books was The Freedom Trap (1971) which was one of the five novels of his to be filmed or televised - a very impressive success rate, given that he produced only fourteen novels prior to his death in 1983, with some titles appearing posthumously.

Two years after publication, the novel reached the big screen as The Mackintosh Man. The film was directed by John Huston and the cast was headed by Paul Newman. The supporting cast included James Mason, Michael Hordern, Harry Andrews, Ian Bannen, and Peter Vaughan. The soundtrack was composed by Maurice Jarre. With such credentials, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, this is an okay film but it's not the masterpiece that one might have hoped for. Walter Hill's script isn't as engaging as Bagley's writing, though many elements of the original story remain. Newman plays Joseph Rearden, a criminal who has started working for British intelligence. As part of a cunning plan, he goes into prison only to be sprung from jail - in a scene that works very well and is arguably the highlight of the film. It's easy to see that the story was inspired by the legendary escape from prison of the spy George Blake.

The story bowls along at a pretty good pace (Huston was, of course, a first-rate director), but without ever gripping or exciting as much as it should do. One of the problems is that a key character, 'Mrs Smith', is played by Dominique Sanda, who gives a depressingly wooden performance; her CV suggests that she is an actor of real talent, but there isn't much evidence of that here, alas, and there's zero chemistry between her and Newman. But much as I like Paul Newman, I'm not convinced that he was the right actor for Reardon, either. Somehow his natural likeability isn't integrated into the storyline as well as it should have been. And I think this is why the film wasn't a critical or box office success. Walter Hill said he never bothered to watch it, which rather says it all.