Felonious Fun

The League of Gentlemen (AFM: Kingsley International). Midnight. A manhole cover lifts hesitantly. Not a soul in sight. The cover slides back and out of the hole pops--tickety-snit! an upper-class Englishman in a dinner jacket. Casually, he shoots his cuffs, slides into his Rolls and glides into this British comedy of misdemeanors--one of the brighter bubbles on the having-wonderful-crime wave (Ocean's 11, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Make Mine Mink, Two-Way Stretch} that has recently flooded the movie markets with felonious fun.

The gentleman in the manhole (Jack Hawkins) turns out to be Lieut. Colonel J.G.N. Hyde, Retd., of the War Office, an impecunious nob who feels that his capacities for command were never adequately recognized in Her Majesty's service. To restore both purse and pride he decides to organize a paramilitary operation of his own. Objective: a bank. A riffle through the army's records discovers seven competent but crooked officers and other ranks (Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, Kieron Moore, Terrence Alexander, Norman Bird)--all cashiered out, all out of cash. Guaranteed -L-100,000 apiece, these amiable scalawags form an unregistered corporation called "Cooperative Removals, Ltd." From there out, the picture becomes simultaneously a sort of rollicking Rififi and a hilarious parody of the last skaty-eight milidramas from Blimey. The major organizes his gang as a commando, runs it by "Queen's Regs," soon whips together a unit that makes up in morale what it lacks in morality. "England," says the colonel proudly, "always supplies the right man for the job. Even if it's the wrong job." Along the sound track at appropriate moments float snatches of martial music, and after B-day ("our finest hour"), many a brave mug's eye is misty as he bids his mates farewell. Happily, the well-mannered British police, always ready to give quod pro quid, arrange for a touching reunion of The League--in quarters provided by Her Majesty.

The film has flaws: the script tends to dawdle, and the blank spots are too often chocked with cheesecake. But the actors, old-line British professionals, are unflappable, and the film is more than merely funny. It demonstrates, more impressively than most recruiting pictures, the advantages of military training in subsequent civilian life.

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