Crime Over London

A crime movie which doesn't quite know where it is going, switching between genres, and as variable as the American accents of the New York gang of crooks who fetch up in London until the heat is off them. They want to commit a big crime but can't decide what it is to be. They amuse themselves with robbery, treachery, adultery and cold-blooded murder. Meanwhile, a big department store is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary in light comedy scenes in which the actors seem on the edge of bursting into song. One half expects Jessie Matthews to appear, or even the Marx Brothers. Nothing links these two stories, except that the copper investigating the gang happens to be vying with the nephew of the store's owner, for the romantic attention of Joan. Sometimes it appears that we are watching two separate and completely different films, each pleasant but neither gripping, an effect also increased by a title sequence that weirdly suggests a Lugosi horror picture like 'The Dark Eyes of London.' Anyway, eventually the two plots come together, via a very long coincidence, and things speed up a bit. Lots of familiar faces, Paul Cavanagh, Margot Grahame, Basil Sydney, Joseph Cawthorn, Googie Withers, Roland Culver, Ian Fleming, Peter Gawthorne, Dino Galvani and Edward Rigby enlivening their scenes.