McVicar (film)

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McVicar
DVD cover
Directed by	Tom Clegg
Produced by	Roy Baird Bill Curbishley Roger Daltrey
Written by	John McVicar Tom Clegg
Starring	Roger Daltrey Adam Faith Cheryl Campbell
Music by	Roger Daltrey Various Artists
Distributed by	The Who Films
Release date(s)	August 1980
Running time	108 min.
Country	U.K.
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

McVicar is a 1980 British film starring Roger Daltrey of The Who in the title role of John McVicar the 1960s armed robber of whom it was publicly announced by Scotland Yard to be public enemy number one and wanted dead or alive. The film was directed by Tom Clegg, responsible for the production of a number of episodes of the seventies cop show The Sweeney.

Released one year after Scum, McVicar (1980) is an overlooked film. Although easily available on budget video, it is rarely seen on television and little commented on elsewhere. Based on the autobiography of armed robber John McVicar, published as McVicar:by himself (1974), the film version starred Roger Daltrey and was made by The Who Films with McVicar acting as co-screenwriter.

1 Overview
2 Cast
3 Soundtrack
4 External links

[edit] Overview

The action is set roughly fifty percent in Durham prison and fifty percent whilst McVicar is on the run in London. The film features plenty of 'motors', birds, 'blags'(armed robberies), and London villains.

Despite its 'pop' leanings - with Roger Daltrey (lead singer with the Who) and sixties pop star and actor Adam Faith, playing the two lead roles as well as a fine support cast that includes Bill Murray, Brian Hall, Steven Berkhoff and Cheryl Campbell as his wife Sheila - McVicar seems to succeed in recreating a fairly 'realistic' account of Durham prison in the 1960s / early 1970s. Relations between 'screws' and 'cons' are portrayed as being fairly unrelentingly antagonistic; officer brutality makes a couple of brief appearances; and there is a fairly even-handed portrayal of the Durham prison 'riot' when the inmates took over E wing and presented the authorities with their demands for improvements in the lifers regime.

The second half of the film is set in London after McVicar has escaped from Durham. Here he re-establishes relationships with his partner and child and eventually decides to try and get out of the life of crime. Arguably the point of the film is that McVicar had to break out of prison to stand any chance of being 'rehabilitated'. Whilst in the lifers wing at Durham he was locked into an unprofitable conflict between staff and cons. Re-establishing family relations provided the spur to reform and the closing titles tell us that after being recaptured and sent back to prison McVicar obtained a degree in Sociology and subsequently early parole.