Johnny Bannion (Stanley Baker) is a violent career criminal, well respected by his fellow inmates and hated by the officers, who has just been released from Wandsworth prison. He immediately meets up with his former gang members, including Mike Carter (Sam Wanamaker) and they plan to commit a robbery at a local racecourse. The robbery goes to plan and the gang escape with £40K which Bannion then burys in a remote farmers field all on his own. In between the robbery and the burial of the loot, Bannion appears to have used some of the money to buy a ring for his new girlfriend Suzanne (Margit Saad). The police are given a tip off by his ex-girlfirend and a fellow gang member and he is back in prison within six weeks. He soon learns that all is not well on the outside with other gang members either being killed or paid off so he enlists the help of prison top dog Frank Saffiron (Gregoire Aslan) to help him escape. Saffiron agrees to help in exchange for the full £40K and he then stages a prison riot and makes Bannion out to be the peacemaker which earns him a transfer to an easier prison. During his transfer, Bannion is busted out by gang member Ted (Nigel Green) who then takes him to a canal barge where Mike Carter is waiting with Suzanne. John learns that Saffiron and Carter have been in cahoots and they offer him a passport to leave the country in exchange for all the money. Bannion fights his way out of the barge and then it's a race to collect the money and make an escape before Mike and the others catch up.

The movie is opened and closed by a beautiful Cleo Laine song called Prison Ballad (Thieving Boy) and that combined with the excitable Scout singing Knick Knack Paddy Whack when grass Kelly (Kenneth Cope - famous for playing Hopkirk in "Randall & Hopkirk Deceased" and Vic Spanner in "Carry On at Your Convenience") returns to prison are probably the highlights for me. There are just too many holes in the plot and we are left second guessing and questioning scenes on numerous occasions. The most important part of the film, the racecourse robbery, is over in minutes and we never actually see how they obtain the money or whether there was any resistance. The gang leave the racecourse together and then suddenly Bannion is on his own burying the money which seems very odd considering how the film panned out. The next thing you know the police have caught up with Bannion after he has exchanged some of the loot for a ring and allegedly been grassed up but we never see any of this. Once back in jail he learns that all is not well on the outside and he wants to break out in exchange for the full £40K which doesn't make any sense - he was better off staying inside knowing that no one else could get at the money. Some of the prison scenes and characters were interesting and the film was probably quite violent for the time but then again very tame compared to the modern day. I quite liked Stanley Baker's character in the movie, he reminded me a bit of Sean Connery in James Bond but none of the other actors really stood out and I would rather have seen Fulton MacKay as the chief prison officer than Patrick Magee (Mr Barrows).

It's a shame the racecourse robbery was not covered in more detail because we only get three minutes to savour Hurst Park in all it's glory (actually referred to as Tennants Park in the film). The dual purpose course had quite a strange layout with very tight bends and the stands almost perpendicular to the winning line with the track carrying on around the back of the stands and then parallel with the Thames. It was good to get a brief glimpse of Prince Monolulu in the Hurst Park betting ring, a flamboyant horse-racing tipster of the day who had the catchphrase "I gotta horse" and was often seen at the Derby. The course sadly closed in October 1962 and despite being quite profitable at the time the owners decided they could make more money from selling the land to property developers - echos of Kempton racecourse in the current day.
 
John Danworth's jazzy music score made this feel more like an American crime drama than a British movie and I found it very hard to follow and understand the storyline being played out on the screen. It was good to get a feel of prison life in the 1960s and also to see Hurst Park on the big screen again but other than that I felt "The Criminal" was quite weak overall. (Rating 4/10)