Villain (1971)

This is when they made movies . Saw this movie 47 years ago. Yes it has dated a bit.But still enjoyable. Richard Burton has real Star quality. Thought provoking movie. Don't make them like this anymore.

Two years before Villain came out Richard Burton along with Rex Harrison went gay in a film called Staircase. But he was about as opposite a gay character as you can get in Villain.In Staircase both Burton and Harrison play a pair of prissy old hairdressers and the film talked about the problems that aging gay men face. Here Burton is as the title says, one of the deepest and darkest of villains, a brutal man who has a hair trigger temper, who kills without the slightest compunction and dearly loves his mother Cathleen Nesbitt. Burton has an almost pathological fear of stool pigeons, will kill you even if he has just the slightest suspicion. It's what makes him difficult for Scotland Yard Inspector Nigel Davenport to catch. But that fear can also be his biggest weakness.One man who is in deadly fear of Burton is Ian McShane who is a bisexual hustler who if he hadn't become the object of Burton's affections would be a lot happier. But Burton is not the kind of guy you say 'no' to.Burton who had one of the most commanding and beautiful voices in the English language managed to retain most of that beauty even slipping into some London cockney speech patterns. And he has the air about him of an unexploded nuclear bomb. It's something different for Burton and should be worth a look.

A towering monument to Eastend gangster-hood, VILLAIN loosely incorporates the persona, history and traits of the Kray twin's mythology into one thunderingly mad and menacing character - Vic Dakin (Richard Burton).Sharply scripted by British sitcom maestros Clement and La Frenais (The Likely Lads, Porridge) this is a fabulously nasty and paroxysmally brutal foray into the London underworld. A place where straight razors, shotguns, revolvers and blunt instruments are the tools of the trade and egocentric kingpins of crime play out cut-price Machiavellian games for a piece of turf.Burton's character - a sadistic homosexual psychopath with a mother-fixation - sounds like a blatant cliché. Luckily, his performance keeps things on the right side of the thin line between believably escalating paranoid psychosis and unrestrained pantomime ham. It's a close call, but Liz Taylor's more talented other half pulls it off - just. He pitches things somewhere between Cagney's Cody Jarrett and the real-life Ronnie Kray and is a truly magnetic act to watch. His final deranged but chilling rant is worth the price of admission alone. It will linger with you.At the time of release, there was much controversy over the violence and the perverse sexual content but nowadays that won't strike as all that shocking, whereas the casual and unpleasant misogyny probably will affront the delicate PC sensibilities of some sensitive souls.VILLAIN stacks up well against those other iconic early seventies British crime classics GET CARTER and SITTING TARGET and is greatly enhanced by Burton burning up the screen with barely restrained ferocity and venom. Compulsive viewing, well worth looking at.

Richard Burton at times seems ill at ease and at other times is pitch perfect in director Michael Tuchner's rift on the Krays (or at least the kinkier half of those infamous twins of evil). Not a great movie, but still VILLAIN has much to recommend. Spurts of extreme violence, dynamite cinematography and excellent editing. There's also a pretty riveting music by Jonathan Hodge. Ian McShane plays Burton's main squeeze, a degenerate pimp who specializes in blackmailing shifty PMs. In a role likely more suited for Michael Caine or even Oliver Reed, Burton dons jet black hair, an odd tan (too much sunning with E Taylor?) and an occasional cockney accent. Considering Burton's track record with his choices of roles in the 1970s, this is nevertheless one his best.