It's a film set among night people in a London still struggling to get on its feet after the war. There's a lot of location shooting and attention to detail in showing the world the characters live in: characters put flowers in their lapels but live in draughty rooms, a nightclub tries to look classy but has beggars and alcoholics buzzing around it, the neon lights are shining again in the West End but it isn't very far to whole city blocks where nearly a decade after the Blitz the rubble has still to be cleared.
When the scene is set so well, it's entirely believable to come across characters who are desperate to escape from their lives, and it doesn't take a lot of explicit violence to be aware that there are a lot of people here who would cut your throat for tuppence ha'penny, let alone a thousand quid, or is that a thousand quids (one of the fun parts of the film is listening to American actors use British slang).
In fact the milieu is drawn so well that not only does it bring you into the movie but it sometimes becomes more interesting than the movie itself. For example one of the characters is a craggy old-time wrestler who is played by a real-life craggy old-time wrestler in his only acting role. He has a fight whose outcome is essential to the plot but where the irresitible forces and immovable objects in human form are so fascinating that when we see the reaction of the other characters, they're partly reacting as their characters would react and it's partly as if the actors have stepped out of the movie for two minutes and are reacting to the scene with the audience.
When the scene is set so well, it's entirely believable to come across characters who are desperate to escape from their lives, and it doesn't take a lot of explicit violence to be aware that there are a lot of people here who would cut your throat for tuppence ha'penny, let alone a thousand quid, or is that a thousand quids (one of the fun parts of the film is listening to American actors use British slang).
In fact the milieu is drawn so well that not only does it bring you into the movie but it sometimes becomes more interesting than the movie itself. For example one of the characters is a craggy old-time wrestler who is played by a real-life craggy old-time wrestler in his only acting role. He has a fight whose outcome is essential to the plot but where the irresitible forces and immovable objects in human form are so fascinating that when we see the reaction of the other characters, they're partly reacting as their characters would react and it's partly as if the actors have stepped out of the movie for two minutes and are reacting to the scene with the audience.