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A different way of telling a story

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

An American construction engineer travels to England in order to meet up with the delightful sweetheart he met during the war. He gradually discovers that the said sweetheart, unlike faithful Penelope, did not spend the intervening years fasting, crying and praying... For about 98% percent of its running time, "The Limping Man" is a good, decent little thriller, well worth of seven stars or more. The performances are good and there is a nicely atmospheric evocation of London shortly after World War II, complete with wharves, pubs and clubs. (If you are familiar with London : am I right in thinking that at least part of the scenery has been comprehensively destroyed in order to make way for prestigious lofts ?) You also get a pair of pretty mellow Scotland Yard detectives, one of whom happens to bear a remarkable resemblance to French actor Michel Serrault. The movie, however, ruins itself by providing an enormously stupid ending. I won't describe the ending, because imdb tends to frown upon these things. Let's just say that, narratively, it belongs to an exquisitely lazy, facile and inept subvariety - we're well into Louis the XV-th territory here. I, for one, sat staring at the empty screen for a considerable amount of time, while going "Whut ? Whut ? Whut !" It's a fair cop-out, guv'nor.

I'm surprised that so many people seem to be disappointed with the ending of this film. The story is typical of a 1950s British crime film with good performances by all - but this ending makes it a bit different. It has the inevitable American lead, in this case the excellent Lloyd Bridges, to make it attractive to the US. The story is seen through to the expected ending but then we find that the story was not perhaps located where we thought it was. It does not mean that the story, still a fictional one of course, becomes any less entertaining because of it. As I get older I realise that an "unconscious" mind, so to speak, is capable of great detail and can set many random and complex problems for which it then tries to find solutions, it must then try to resolve at least some of them before it returns to full consciousness. The clues are there, remember the limping man being followed to the riverside, where did he go? Yes, the shock of the ending is sudden, but when you wake up it's usually like that, all may be forgotten in a flash. Did the writer of the original story or the director think of it like that, or was it just an attempt to be different, a joke, just for the sake of it? I don't know but I liked it.

Whoever is responsible for the story that told by this film simply didn't know of a reasonable way to pull it together, and so just let it fall apart.After an unexplained separation of six years, an American flies to the UK to meet the woman whom he loves, an actress of some fame. As he and the other passengers walk from the plane to a terminal building, a man whom he stops by chance is felled by a sniper's bullet. The sniper walked with the assistance of a crutch. It is discovered that the woman whom the American has come to see had been both sexually involved and engaged in smuggling with the man identified as the victim of the sniper; apparently she was motivated to do these things because of her longing for the American. Further, her lover had subsequently blackmailed her, and now his presumptive widow, a singer, was blackmailing her. On the way, we discover that someone with an administrative rôle at the singer's theater uses a crutch. When the actress attempts to pay the singer, the actress and the audience learn that the presumptive dead man is still alive, and being assisted by his wife. The fellow with the crutch makes an appearance and is greatly injured by the blackmailer. The police, who have been going about the business of trying to solve the murder and trying to run the actress to ground show-up. A search for the blackmailer is begun; he has for no very good reason disguised himself as the fellow with the crutch, and when the police begin looking for a man with a crutch, it does not occur to him to chuck the thing aside; instead, he retreats to a balcony. When he is spotted, the America dashes after him, instead of allowing the surrounding police to do their job. A struggle ensues, with the American finding himself to be pushed off the balcony.Were the film to break at this point, the audience would be left with many questions. Answering even just some of them in a satisfactory manner would be quite a challenge.Well, the American awakes, because it was all a dream. That was the best answer that the writers had for us. (Formally, the ending has the disembarked American and the actress happily running each towards the other, perhaps to assure us that he hasn't dreamt exactly the future he were about to enter.) If, up to that point of awakening, the story had been, in some interesting way, dream-like, then that ending might be sensible or at least forgivable. But the story had been a haphazard construction of implausibilities, and the ending was simply a cheat.

Absorbing little co-feature that holds the interest. It would be worth the price of admission if not for the I-want-my-money-back ending. Nice acting jobs all around, Miss Lister in particular. Good workmanlike performance by the dependable Lloyd Bridges. The picture didn't drag and moved along at a nice clip. In truth, I didn't mind the ending as I felt the plot was starting to dig a hole for itself which made the ending rather timely. Had never seen this picture in TV listings - I had a DVD copy which was quite good. Makes you wonder how many other underrated films never made it to a format of any kind, and are now gone forever.