(There are a lot of spoilers here, more than I usually include.)

Late in Lewis Gilbert’s The Good Die Young, Miles “Rave” Ravenscourt, expertly played by Laurence Harvey, opines that the men of the film’s title perish in war while the surviving soldiers are, in my words, sort of like sediment shifting to the bottom of a glass. Rave himself is a supposed war hero, having killed six Germans “in the desert.” Two of the other men, both Americans, have military experience as well. Eddie Blaine (John Ireland) is an air force pilot stationed in England, but about to be shipped off to Germany, and Joe Halsey (Richard Basehart) is a Korean War vet whose two years of service are held against him as little more than missed time by his boss. A fourth man, Mike Morgan (Stanley Baker), is a boxer who’s unexpectedly won his final fight and loses the use of a hand in the process.

For varying reasons, all four are placed in desperate situations and consumed by the struggle of retaining the women they love or once loved. Rave is a careless, jobless professional gentleman with a wealthy wife who’s tired of his sponging and a wealthier father who tells him in no uncertain terms that he’d rather see Rave dead and buried than live for his share of an inheritance. A £1,000 check for losses incurred while gambling is set to bounce unless Rave can talk his way into the money. Failure to do so and the lure of financial freedom (at least for awhile) causes Rave to eye the bank notes at a nearby post office, £90,000 worth. The idea is for Rave and his three new bar buddies to catch the money as it’s being transported. And, of course, no one gets hurt.

Rave is the catalyst and each man, reluctantly, has to be convinced. Mike’s the classic boxer type you frequently see in older movies. He’s made a little from fighting, but not equal to the sacrifices of partial hearing and vision loss. The money he saved up gets wasted in lost bail money for his useless brother-in-law. Mike takes his anger out on his wife, not surprising since boxers are used to unleashing their aggression on whatever’s within arm’s reach. Eddie and Joe both have marital problems of their own. When the movie begins, Eddie’s on 48-hours leave and his wife Denise (Gloria Grahame) couldn’t care less. She’s sort of an actress, sort of a tramp, but Eddie’s all of a cuckold.

There’s a funny scene the first time we see Denise, when she’s coming home with her co-star, and a group of young girls swarm around the leading man for an autograph. He urges the girls to have Denise sign something, too. After she signs for the one fan with any interest, Denise adjusts herself and announces they have to be going now, barely fooling anyone. I love how Grahame makes the character so unapologetically bitchy and completely without sympathy. She’s a wolf fully dressed in wolf’s clothing. The last scene she has is my favorite in the film, when Eddie literally kicks the actor boyfriend in his backside and quits being so submissive. Denise likes this side of her husband and we see her warm up to him for the first time - only to have Eddie throw her into a bathtub full of water.

It’s not another man that stands between Joe and his wife Mary (Joan Collins), but another woman. Mary’s mother has been sick and so she flew to England from the U.S. to be with her, but, after a few weeks, Joe’s getting antsy. He flies over himself and learns the delay was because Mary’s pregnant. But when Joe’s ready to take Mary home, her mother fakes a suicide attempt. The flight money for tickets back to New York dries up quickly and Joe’s daily trips to a bar lead him to meeting Mike first, his old pal Eddie next, and, finally, the slithering Rave. The coincidence of film manifests itself into four guys, each with a lot to lose and all close to wit’s end. Rave is opportunistic and, as we find out, full of greed and evil.

The film’s final twenty minutes or so, post-heist, are cold-hearted and fascinating, played out on grimy and uninviting London streets. The Good Die Young isn’t really a heist thriller at all. It’s a fairly dark character study about these four men, their desperation and the reasoning for their involvement in a predictably ill-fated robbery. You could make comparisons to The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, but, aside from this being inferior and missing Sterling Hayden, I think Gilbert’s film exists in a different, more noirlike area. It’s a very good picture and fits nicely in what I’d consider to be the style of film noir. Death, desperation, darkness - what more could you ask for?

Controlled, I believe, by MGM, there’s not yet a DVD for The Good Die Young in R1. The unfortunately named Wienerworld Ltd is listed as distributor for this in R2. Horrible cover art, and I can’t speak to the quality. The broadcast version I watched from a TCM recording looked a little weak, if acceptable, but the sound had a persistent hiss.