"Let him have it" often shown on A & E here in the US as "Let him have it, Chris" is an excellent polemic that doesn't lose sight of balance in its preaching against the death penalty. For a film written by an American, there is a nearly English even hand in the account.
We start with a cute boy dazed in the blitz of 1940s London. A little dim witted, he takes the rap (American Jive: catches the case) for some local hooligans and ends up remanded to juvy where he comes of age.
There's a glimmer of Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) from Angels with Dirty Faces in Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston) but unlike Rocky Sullivan who's a nihilist by choice, poor Derek is a bit too simple to understand.
The path might have led to rehabilitation but for the bad environment. In an ambiguous situation, miscalculation leads to the unforgivable and now Derek Bentley faces the gallows.
The story might have drifted into a self-indulgent, tear-jerking, liberal sensitivity philippic except that the film kept its objectivity on the central issue.
Oh there is the usual liberal hue and cry: the police lied to juice up their case (as they usually do), the lawyers poor people get are incompetent (a wide range of abilities might be more charitable), justice even Her Majesty can be a little cold to cop killers, the wrong people get off easy on loopholes etc.
However the authors, surprising for the American writer, kept an English sense of fairness on the critical question.
Did Derek Bentley rightly go to the gallows for what he done? See the film. Comparable Films: Hoodlum Priest
We start with a cute boy dazed in the blitz of 1940s London. A little dim witted, he takes the rap (American Jive: catches the case) for some local hooligans and ends up remanded to juvy where he comes of age.
There's a glimmer of Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney) from Angels with Dirty Faces in Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston) but unlike Rocky Sullivan who's a nihilist by choice, poor Derek is a bit too simple to understand.
The path might have led to rehabilitation but for the bad environment. In an ambiguous situation, miscalculation leads to the unforgivable and now Derek Bentley faces the gallows.
The story might have drifted into a self-indulgent, tear-jerking, liberal sensitivity philippic except that the film kept its objectivity on the central issue.
Oh there is the usual liberal hue and cry: the police lied to juice up their case (as they usually do), the lawyers poor people get are incompetent (a wide range of abilities might be more charitable), justice even Her Majesty can be a little cold to cop killers, the wrong people get off easy on loopholes etc.
However the authors, surprising for the American writer, kept an English sense of fairness on the critical question.
Did Derek Bentley rightly go to the gallows for what he done? See the film. Comparable Films: Hoodlum Priest