Tomorrow Never Comes

I wrote in my review about The Penthouse (1967) that director Peter Collinson's favourite two themes were violence and aggression. This is another Collinson offering, and once again his emphasis seems to be on the more brutal elements of the story. Tomorrow Never Comes is a mediocre siege-thriller, helped by its surprisingly high calibre cast but hindered by its frequent reliance on viciousness.

The story is essentially a rougher variation on an earlier French movie entitled Le Jour Se Leve. An unbalanced young guy, Frank (Stephen McHattie), goes bananas when he discovers that his girlfrind Janie (Susan George) has been unfaithful. He holds her hostage at gunpoint in a beach cabana, and his plight worsens when he shoots a cop who happens by. Local cop Jim Wilson (Oliver Reed) - on his last day in the job before retirement - must try to defuse the situation before someone else gets killed.

Though the film is far from great, it still features a handful of taut moments. Also, the performances are pretty good, with McHattie, Reed, George and Donald Pleasance all in commanding form. Why did I use the word mediocre to describe the film earlier in this review? Well, unfortunately much of the good work is undone by Collinson's sour, nasty tone. The ending is somewhat grim and, while I don't always like happy endings, this film needed a light climax to relieve the claustrophobic siege scenes that had gone before. The pacing becomes problematic, with too much chat surplus to requirement at the points where excitement should be peaking. And beyond the four really strong leading performances mentioned above, there are an awful lot of weak and under-written supporting performances further down the cast list.