Rogue Male (1976) Reviews

• This is a remake of the 1941 move "Man Hunt" based on the same book.

  Matinee-32000-03-23

  This is a remake of the 1941 movie "Man Hunt" based on the same book. It's a pity one can't combine the casts of both films, because the villain in the earlier version was played by George Sanders, who would have been wonderful opposite O'Toole. The plot is marvellously gritty, with a brutal struggle for survival and a sense of desperation rarely seen in British films.

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• A Story of Nazi Appeasement

  Aglaope2006-07-17

  I first saw this on TV back in the mid 70's and it was definitely a story of the time, when WW2 was still in the forefront of many peoples minds. Maybe not to the more modern taste, I've always enjoyed this film. It has a feel of the Thirty Nine Steps about it. Just before the outbreak of WW2, Peter O'Tooles character fails in his revenge assassination attempt on Hitler. With the help of a sympathetic German, and English sailors, he escapes back to Britain and has to go on the run from the British and Nazi authorities who are both after him to return to Germany to answer for his "crime". He goes into hiding in the country, drawing on his hunting experience, and waits to the outbreak of war when his assassination attempt is looked on in a completely different light by the British, who now see him as a potential asset.

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• "We can pull out your fingernails while we wait"

  rhinocerosfive-12008-04-02

  Through long practice, Clive Donner has mastered the art of making pictures unmistakable for anything but British television - cramped, carelessly framed shots; anachronistic hairdressing and set decoration; the cheapest possible film stock; music disinterred from a muzak burial ground; scenes every single one of which was obviously the first take; editing apparently committed with a greasy boning knife by a whimsical butcher. Yet for all its brownish greens, awkward flashbacks and 70s sideburns, the WWII thriller ROGUE MALE is that rarest of items, a badly directed good movie. It's Frederic Raphael, the most pretentiously named writer since Goldsworthy Dickinson, who bears primary responsibility for the film's success. He keeps things fairly rushing along, always ready with a clever quip for Peter O'Toole to flip from the tip of his furred tongue. Within five minutes, O'Toole at his most wan and inebriated is tortured by Michael Byrne, the same Nazi who twenty years later was hurled off a cliff by Harrison Ford. Here, he and O'Toole insult each other's public school before O'Toole is hurled off a cliff onto a shotgunned pig. Then O'Toole, probably of necessity, is allowed to abandon vertical ambulation, crawling and slithering through much of the movie. It's a good start to a really fun little spy hunter. This is the O'Toole of legend, the one who falls off stages reciting sonnets backward, the famous wastrel, the untamed actor so charming and well-equipped that even when he forgets his line, can't walk without a stagger, or drifts through entire scenes with the most bleary of stares, delivers a thoroughly entertaining and credible performance. When the Nazis stuff a dead cat into his burrow, he recites Byron to it. How many actors could pull that off, drunk or sober? Incidentally, his character's name in this film is Robert Hunter, not Thorndyke, which title IMDb curiously bestows upon him. (In the novel the character is unnamed, and in Fritz Lang's previous adaptation MAN HUNT he's Alan Thorndike with an i. Hmm.)

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• perfectly Seventies

  FelixFlanken2004-07-28

  I found this film lurking in the BBC Archives with dust on it.Last viewed the year it came out.It is an immensely atmospheric film shot in that typical seventies film which has aged - slightly murky and blurred with low and dark colour range, a bit like Bergerac or outside scenes of Fawlty Towers! I think Peter O'Toole does a great job in this and is so suited to the role and is really the only real acting presence apart from perhaps the chap he shoots at the end.There are a couple of nice quirky characters though who he meets on the , like the couple who sell him a tandem in a quaint village in Dorset and his plump uncle who we only ever see in a Turkish steam room. This a a good bit of greyish British seventies TV.

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• A first-rate thriller receives a superior adaptation.

  lime-31999-07-02

  "Rogue Male" is Geoffrey Household's finest thriller, and has long been one of my favorite books. I only discovered the existence of the film recently, and, sold by the screenwriter, director and cast listings, bought it sight-unseen, which I NEVER do. I was not disappointed. Cuts and changes were made, of course, the vast majority thoroughly justifiable. One or two others, while perhaps not strictly necessary, did no harm at all. The result was complete justice to the novel and a fine film!

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