Blistering performances.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Jack Cardiff does a good job in his directorial debut, 1958's Intent to Kill, starring Richard Todd, Herbert Lom, Betsy Drake, Warren Stevens, and Lisa Gastoni. Lom plays a South American leader who has entered a Canadian hospital under the name of Martin; however, that doesn't stop a group of assassins, headed by Warren Stevens, from getting the details of his stay and trying to assassinate him. The goal is to have the doctor in their gang inject him with an air bubble. It doesn't quite work out as they hoped.Richard Todd plays his doctor, Dr. McLaurin, an unhappily married man who is in love (platonically for the moment) with a nurse, Nancy Ferguson (Betsy Drake).Though this is a British film, it's set in a hospital in Canada, and is reminiscent of the film Crisis, which starred Cary Grant. The acting is good, particularly from Lom, and the camera work, no surprise, is interesting.The best scenes in this film, in my opinion, occur at the end, when there is a confrontation on a staircase, an intense and exciting scene, very well done.Entertaining with some nice twists and good elements.

This was legendary British cinematographer Cardiff's official directorial debut after his involvement in Errol Flynn's aborted pet project, THE STORY OF WILLIAM TELL in 1953. Although I have had to make do with a barely serviceable copy culled from a VHS-sourced transmission off of US TV channel "American Movie Classics", this is quite a good thriller that deserves rediscovery.While the plot is hardly original – being a rehash of STATE SECRET and CRISIS (both 1950) – the good cast and suspenseful narrative twists (courtesy of late screenwriter Jimmy Sangster) make for an enjoyably engrossing 90 minutes. Despite being a British production, it is mostly set in a Canadian hospital, where various attempts are made on the life of South American leader Herbert Lom (who had also appeared in the afore-mentioned STATE SECRET!) who has been admitted there, supposedly incognito, to undergo brain surgery. Among the surgeons operating on him are Richard Todd, Betsy Drake (then Mrs. Cary Grant, who was the star of CRISIS!) and Alexander Knox; on the other side of the spectrum are a hired trio of assassins: Warren Stevens, John Crawford (later the brutish gangster on the run in Hammer's HELL IS A CITY {1960}) and Peter Arne (who would himself graduate to playing notable villains).Thankfully, the tense interaction between the incompatible band of villains make up for the double helping of soap opera elements to be found in Todd's wife getting hysterically threatening after discovering his unspoken feelings for Drake and, consequently, his unwillingness to leave Canada for a better-paying job in London as a doctor to elite society; similarly, Lom's much-younger wife (Lisa Gastoni, here in her international phase prior to the actress' "Euro-Cult" heyday) is being pursued by Carlo Justini, a former beau and Lom's own two-faced (in more ways than one) lieutenant. Actually, Justini is the middleman between the hired killers and their employers but their plans go repeatedly awry because Stevens has to contend with boorish Crawford's penchant for partying and disgraced medico Arne's bundle of nerves and the palpable enmity between these two! The exciting climax sees Todd (ostensibly acting as lookout but actually romancing Drake) taking on the gun-toting Crawford in the hospital back-stairs and the convalescing and depressed (over his wife's suspected infidelity) Lom facing-off personally with Stevens – who had previously only acted as telephone diversion to Lom's attending nurse – in his room (via a gun ingeniously-hidden within the unlikeliest and most innocuous-looking of personal belongings on his bed-side table!); in the ensuing commotion, both Todd and a Canadian Mountie guarding the reception area are wounded.

***SPOILERS*** Nice little sleeper of a crime/suspense movie set in cold and snowy Montreal Canada that has to do with the head of an unnamed South American country being secretly slipped into Montreal General Hosptal to have a life saving and very delicate brain operation. This after getting medical treatment back home, after an assassination attempt on his life, that didn't detect a massive blood clot on his brain that can eventually kill him.Jaun Medna known as both the peoples and peasants champion back home is given the name of Martin to hide his identity as he's admitted into Montreal General for emergency brain surgery. Unknown to him and the hospital staff the opposition party who hate Menda's guts are planning to do him in before he's ever operated on.Getting this trio of Canadian hit-men to do the job for them, at $50,000.00 apiece, those opposed to Menda staying alive have his top lieutenant Francisco Flores keying them in on his boss', Juan Menda, whereabouts in and out of the hospital and relaying that information to the head of the hit squad Finch and his two associates Karl and Boyd. Francisco, who considers himself to be a great Latin lover, who besides wanting Menda out off the way for being against the ruling class back home is also very much interested in his beautiful and spoiled wife Carla. Francisco want's to start up a hot and heavy relationship with her which he wouldn't have dared to do with Menda being alive and in control of the country.The movie "Intent to Kill" also has a double plot to it that has nothing to do with Menda's health and those who want to make him very unhealthy, or dead with his doctor at the hospital Dr. Bob McLaurin having trouble with his wife Margaret. Margaret wants him to quit his job and move back to London England where he can be a doctor to the rich and famous in preforming cosmetic surgery and make three times as much money as he does in Montreal General. Margaret threatening to expose her husbands affair with his fellow surgeon Dr. Nancy Furgerson has Bob losing his concentration and almost causes him to mess up his patient Juan Menda during the brain operation he preformed on him. That caused Bob to almost do the job that the opponents of Menda paid Finch and his hit-men to do.Menda recovering from his operation, that was deemed to be a complete success, is uncomfortable with his wife Carla not getting in touch with him. He smells a rat in both her and his top aid Francisco either playing around behind his back or working together with his enemies to do him in. Being the pragmatic and street wise politician that Menda is he's more then proved right, or at least half right, by the time the movie ends. The hit men who are out to knock off Menda are stymied when he correctly insists to be moved into another room, seeing that the room that he's staying at has a fire-escape. The killers end up killing the wrong man Hardy, who's also one of Doctor Bob's patients suffering from a slipped disc.Hardy's death, the first man to die in Montreal General Hospital while being treated for a slipped disc, sets off alarms in Doctor Bob's head as he senses that he was mistaken for Menda. Doctor Bob then gets in touch with the Montreal police to send a man over, Sgt. O'Brien, to guard him day and night until he's put back on a plane to take him back home. But the hit-men team not wanting to leave empty handed, without their $150,000.00 for knocking Menda off, are now more then ever determined to finish their job that they were hired to do. In their haste they end up screwing themselves, not Menda, up.Wild and unbelievable final with the three hit men Doctor Bob and about a half dozen Canadian Mounties having it out in a wild shoot-out in the hospital corridor that turns Montreal General into a free fire combat zone. With Boyd after knocking off his fellow hit-man Karl for screwing, like he always did, everything up. Byd is then tackled by a wounded Dr. Bob as they both crash out a hospital window with Boyd knocked unconscious and arrested by the police who came on the scene. With chaos and confusion raging inside the hospital Finch impersonating a policeman finally manages to break into Menda's unguarded hospital room only to get the surprise of his life. It turned out that Menda was not at all that sedated and naive, to what Finch & Co. were planing to do to him, but was more then ready to face him man to man with a little toy that he secretly had with him to protect himself.

Catch this one, if you can. The acting is not that good; but, there is some comic relief in the way th would-be assassins blunder everything! Also, Warren Stevens is a Great, great actor--and, I know he did a huge amount of work in TV, but what an underestimated actor!It is an American production, and they employed a lot of Local Canadian extras---Poor idea--Canadians probably "can" act; but not in this one.Keep an eye on Herbert Lom--Awesome! Carlo Giustini is a handsome Italian actor--but, again, not a very good actor, either.It is a little dramatic with the "wife" routine--sort of a la soap opera--but, If you find see this movie--I know you will love it.