Every era think's it's living through a crime wave, a fact here attested to by the posters adverting 'White Heat' seen in one scene.
This is definitely one recreation of the fifties that isn't suffused with a warm nostalgic glow - although the familiar faces of Tom Courtney, Murray Melvin and Michael Gough create an old-fashioned ambience (the first two had actually been around long enough to have played juvenile delinquents themselves) - since along with the case of Timothy Evans, the Craig & Bentley affair (which came after Jack Warner had already got it in the gut from zoot-suited wideboy Dirk Bogarde in 'The Blue Lamp') presented the most decisive case against capital punished since you can never unhang someone whose taken the nine o'clock walk.
My mother was born the same year as Christopher Craig, vividly remembered this case and was herself of the belief that Derek Bentley's words (which actually comprises the title of this film, complete with punctuation marks) was telling Craig to pull the trigger but Bentley's hanging was still a plain case of judicial murder.
This is definitely one recreation of the fifties that isn't suffused with a warm nostalgic glow - although the familiar faces of Tom Courtney, Murray Melvin and Michael Gough create an old-fashioned ambience (the first two had actually been around long enough to have played juvenile delinquents themselves) - since along with the case of Timothy Evans, the Craig & Bentley affair (which came after Jack Warner had already got it in the gut from zoot-suited wideboy Dirk Bogarde in 'The Blue Lamp') presented the most decisive case against capital punished since you can never unhang someone whose taken the nine o'clock walk.
My mother was born the same year as Christopher Craig, vividly remembered this case and was herself of the belief that Derek Bentley's words (which actually comprises the title of this film, complete with punctuation marks) was telling Craig to pull the trigger but Bentley's hanging was still a plain case of judicial murder.