Man on the Run

Written, directed, and produced by Lawrence Huntington, Man on the Run tells a simple tale of one of the estimated 20,000 British army deserters during World War II. While these soldiers generally faced universal condemnation, we can more readily forgive the desertion here by Sergeant Peter Burden (Derek Farr) because he’d been denied a request to go home and say goodbye to his dying sister. Already feeling hopelessly lost back in his own country, the fugitive Burden, attempting to pawn his pistol to buy food, suddenly finds himself in the middle of an armed burglary turned murder, wrongly identified as the perpetrator. This is noir, so of course he’ll now have to elude the police manhunt while pursuing the real criminals (he recalls that one was missing two fingers and spoke with an Australian accent). Along the way, he encounters a singular bright spot in all of London whose name is Jean Adams (Joan Hopkins), a lonely war widow who believes Burden is innocent and soon falls in love with him (“It’s happened, hasn’t it?”). When Scotland Yard discovers that Jean’s been sheltering Burden, she’s placed under 24-hour surveillance. Prolific British cinematographer Wilkie Cooper creates brilliant atmosphere in both the shadows of London streets and the dusky shores at the beach house (note the gorgeous long shots of the seashore), while composer Philip Green offers a less brilliant score that often feels distant and/or overwrought.