John McVicar (Roger Daltrey) is in prison serving a sentence for armed robbery. Asleep in his cell he is rudely awoken by the guards opening the door and ordering him out, telling him to put on the clothes they have provided for him, though he is very annoyed they are not offering him his trainers to wear and instead want him to wear more officially sanctioned brogues, and makes this clear in no uncertain terms. The guards eventually relent, but like it or not McVicar is being transferred to a high security jail in the North of England...
This sort of biopic of one of Britain's most notorious prisoners was one of the few movies produced by rock band The Who under their Who Films banner. Their previous two had been the documentary The Kids are Alright and the adaptation of their concept album Quadrophenia from the year before, but for this Roger Daltrey fancied the opportunity to flex his acting muscles and the real John McVicar teamed up with (usually television) director Tom Clegg to pen a script based on McVicar's autobiographical book, which had been a big seller in the United Kingdom, as befitting the nation's fascination with wrongdoers.
Daltrey was very effective in the role, certainly more impressive than he was in other moves, which suggested this had been crafted to his specific talents more than say, The Legacy where he had been wheeled on like a guest star for a cast of recognisable names. Joining him were a host of well known faces, if not well-known names, of the kind that Clegg would direct in his small screen work, though Adam Faith as Walter Probyn, the man who instigates McVicar's escape attempt from that high security prison, added some additional rock star (well, pop star) quality and Steven Berkoff appeared as the prisoner who could very well mess up the grand plan for fleeing their bonds.
Although this had a strong basis in fact, as the card at the beginning said certain liberties had been taken, things changed and representations of real people either given different names or amalgamated into composite characters, offering true crime fans the opportunity to guess who was supposed to be whom. The most obvious one is a version of Moors Murderer Ian Brady, who is pointedly portrayed so as to reassure the audience that McVicar may be a violent criminal, but he would never sink as low as that offender, as if there were tiers of acceptability within the criminal fraternity. Whether you bought into that was up to you as these men were in this jail for a reason, and that was their danger to the public.
And all this time I thought Daltrey was playing a Scottish clergyman. Boom! Boom!
In all seriousness, they could do a sequel in light of the unsettling turn of events between John McVicar and his estranged son.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
1 Mar 2013
Ah, if Daltrey had been Church of Scotland he'd be called Minister. Funny that McVicar's son as represented here was about the only point they spent much time together. Crime doesn't pay, as they say (unless you pen a successful book about it, natch).
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