Permission to Kill

This limp spy story should have been prefaced by a caption saying: actors at work. A goodish cast demonstrates little more than the fact that actors, too, sometimes have to take on jobs to pay the rent. The film also indulges Bogarde's weakness for inferior espionage thrillers. At his most fastidious (the pursed lips vs the raised eyebrow), he plays a security officer attempting to prevent a political exile (Fehmiu) from returning to lead his people. Various skeletons from the hapless man's past are manipulated into Bogarde's service and wheeled on in an attempt to make him stay. As one of them says towards the end: 'There are no words adequate to describe what we've just seen'. A fair demonstration of the script's lack of any awareness.