Verdict
Summary
An intense thriller with a deadpan Poitier in the lead, The Lost Man is a remake of a film called Odd Man Out, which itself was an adaptation of an Irish novel, and this version completely reimagines the entire proceedings to an urban setting in the U.S., which isn’t entirely successful. While the police procedural / heist elements are pretty good, the film tries to pepper the plot with a “message” of social injustice, which becomes muddled with its themes of theft, homicide, and hopelessness. The film leaves the viewer in a state of melancholy and the whole thing is rather pointless by the end credits.
Plot:
A robbery goes bad, leaving the ringleader to fend for himself while being chased by cops for several straight days.
Review:
Fed up with the system that keeps his fellow blacks in an endless cycle of poverty and injustice, an ex-con named Jason (Sidney Poitier), who is part of a militant social justice group that operates in the decaying slums amongst all the poor squatters, meticulously organizes a bankroll robbery that involves misdirection, split-second timing, and more than a half a dozen partners, each of whom must be willing to execute his crackerjack plan to the second. What, of course, they don’t quite count on is that things might go very wrong, and indeed that is the case: Jason kills a guard in self-defense, which amounts to murder, and he himself is wounded and forced to go on the run on foot with all the loot while his partners get away and split off in every direction. He manages to get a bystander to help him for a night, while his greatest asset is a white social worker (played by Poitier’s future wife Joanna Shimkus), who happens to be the daughter of the police commissioner, to aide him in trying to escape the city which proves to be nearly impossible as the entire city is on lockdown to find him and the rest of his partners.
An intense thriller with a deadpan Poitier in the lead, The Lost Man is a remake of a film called Odd Man Out, which itself was an adaptation of an Irish novel, and this version completely reimagines the entire proceedings to an urban setting in the U.S., which isn’t entirely successful. While the police procedural / heist elements are pretty good, the film tries to pepper the plot with a “message” of social injustice, which becomes muddled with its themes of theft, homicide, and hopelessness. The film leaves the viewer in a state of melancholy and the whole thing is rather pointless by the end credits. Adapted and directed by Robert Alan Aurthur.
Kino Lorber brings The Lost Man to Blu-ray, and the transfer comes in a crisp new 4K scan, and the disc also has an audio commentary by two film historians, plus the trailer.
