TV Cream

Films: T is for...

Time Lock

British-made but Canadian-set one-locationer about a boy who gets stuck in a bank’s airtight, time-controlled safe, and the earnest frowning men in hats who pace up and down trying to get him out. It sounds like there’s absolutely nothing to it from that description, and indeed there isn’t. performances, from the hilariously bad little boy to Sean Connery as a welder, Are of the harrumphing declamatory or downright hopeless schools of acting. Characterisation goes for a burton – Everyone’s earnest and helpful and worried in equal amounts. Experts arrive, crowds build, blah blah blah. And the ending is inevitably unsatisfactory (Possible spoiler: look, either the boy’s dead or alive when they get him out, which one do you think is most likely?) And yet… and yet. we were riveted to the thing for the whole 80 minutes. Arthur Hailey on writing duties and Gerald Thomas behind the camera (and Doesn’t that pairing make you wish the Carry on team had chosen disaster movies instead of soft porn for their swansong?) cook up an unoriginal, far-from-nourishing broth of bland suspense, but it’s mighty hot, and hits the spot… somehow. It’s certainly more honestly enjoyable that the Airplane!-inspiring Zero Hour, dashed off by Hailey in the same busy year, though we have neither the wit nor the words to say why.

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