The Good Die Young

With an exceptional (and large) cast from both sides of the Atlantic at his disposal, English director Lewis Gilbert created a riveting heist film in The Good Die Young, one that brilliantly narrates the personal drama of the accomplices a la The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Rififi (1955), etc., leading to a crescendo of film noir greatness in the final third. Told largely in flashback and alternating among the four main characters’ lives, the film’s ostensible lead is Laurence Harvey as Miles “Rave” Ravenscourt, a spoiled, smarmy rich kid who constantly sleeps around on his even richer wife (Margaret Leighton), which leads her ultimately to cut him off financially and move to Kenya. In need of a fortune of his own (his father, who despises him, won’t release his inheritance until after his death), Rave makes the acquaintance of three different men at a bar, each disillusioned with the present state of his life, and eventually recruits them into his scheme to hold up the money truck that arrives regularly at the post office. Unemployed Joe Halsey (Richard Basehart) needs cash to fly his wife (Joan Collins) home to America and away from the manipulative clutches of her ailing mother (Freda Jackson); Eddie Blaine (John Ireland) is an AWOL soldier facing the daily humiliation of his unfaithful wife (Gloria Grahame with a British-ish accent), who flaunts her affairs in front of his face; and Mike Morgan (Stanley Baker) is an aging boxer unable to find work with a disabled hand. Featuring a masterful script that makes the drama as thrilling as the action, The Good Die Young culminates in the heist sequence and its immediate aftermath, which shine with the noir style (slick streets, foggy escapes, overgrown graveyards, airport confrontations at gunpoint) even as each life is snuffed out, one by one, like flickering candles at the end of one misguided night.