An involving, tight little thriller that should be better known, and is in need of some print remastering (though I consider myself lucky to at least have a copy). Although the decision to open the film with a sort of flash-forward is, in this case, a questionable one, since the viewer from that point on knows that the hero will eventually get caught, writer-director Sidney Gilliat manages to milk a lot of suspense out of the situations and the incidents that occur while Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is desperately trying to escape. The fictional language created especially for this film is a masterstroke, familiar-sounding enough to be believable but also alien-sounding enough to be impossible for a foreigner like Fairbanks to understand more than a word or two. All the actors give fine performances, and there is some very well done first-person point-of-view camera-work. The ending may strike you as a little too "deus ex machina"-ish. *** out of 4.
Review of The Great Manhunt
