Let's be realistic.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This is the kind of mediocrity that makes Old Mother Riley look cutting edge. There's barely one believable frame in the whole movie. For reasons clearly meant to 1) mislead and 2) generate interest the opening sequence finds Trevor Howard driving along what appears to be a coast road in a storm. He turns out to be an archaeologist. So much for suspense. He puts up at a sinister inn where a shabbily dressed Wilfrid Hyde White clearly having been frightened by Dooly Wilson in Casablanca is playing a jaunty version of Clopin Clopant on a beat-up upright ignored by several deadbeats led by Herbert Lom with drinks being dispensed by a young Anouk Aimee as if at Finishing School in Lausanne. It doesn't get any better. Unbelievably Howard really IS what it says on the tin and NOT a British agent, undercover cop, intrepid investigative reporter or anything the slightest bit interesting and the fact that he stumbles onto a gun-running syndicate is more embarrassing than sinister. If you like thrillers sans thrills this is for you and if you mistake Miles Malleson for Claude Rains or even Louis Renault then you got trouble, my friend, right here in Waterfront City.

GOLDEN SALAMANDER is an intriguing and moralistic British crime film of 1950 that stars Trevor Howard in a winning performance as the sympathetic lead. He plays a British archaeologist who heads off to Tunisia to retrieve some priceless antiquities discovered in a rich client's cellar. While on the scene, he soon becomes aware of a gun running scheme in the locality and must decide between keeping tight-lipped or revealing what he knows to the authorities. Although this feels like a low budget production at times, it's generally pretty effective. The narrative is lean and clean and the exotic landscapes put to good effect. The story plays out in a way which is both slow and realistic. Herbert Lom is an effective villain, as always, and Anouk leads a certain exotic beauty to the role of the love interest. The climax of the film is an extended chase sequence which works nicely, topping off a generally well-rounded production.

Trevor Howard, past his prime, is a plucky archaeologist matching wits against gunrunners in North Africa and falling in love with Anouk Aimee.This post-war British thriller suffers from an almost terminal stiffness of the upper lip, but it offers an intelligent, no-nonsense script and several notable performances, particularly among the villains (Howard's principal adversary is a young and menacing Herbert Lom.The story was adapted from a Victor Canning novel and filmed, to excellent advantage, on location in Tunisia.

Trevor Howard is driving to a small Tunisian town in the pouring rain but a rock slide blocks the road and he has to hoof it. He stumbles across a disabled truck carrying a load of contraband pistols...a couple of dudes approach and he hides....he sees the dudes faces in lightning and so the plot is in motion. In a café in town he meets the lackadaisical piano player and mopey barmaid Anouk Aimee. Then the dudes from the truck come in the café and the plot thickens. The truck dudes know he was stranded by the rock slide so they ask him if he saw them or the truck. Gosh,no says he. They don't believe him. One of the dudes is Max. After awhile he convinces Max to run away from the other dude and hightail it to Paris, so he can pursue his career as an artist (not kidding). Max says OK, but the other dude finds out & makes Max go for a swim in concrete boots. Then Howard goes to the police chief to narc on the other dude who snuffed Max but turns out the chief is on the take. Matter of fact the whole town is crooked and owned by the villain who lives behind a desk in the fancy spread outside town. He's the kingpin of the gun-running operation.Well, after some romance between Howard and Aimee, lots of running in the drably scenic Tunisian hills and dales,the good guys and the villains end up all together outside town at Villa d'villain. Its not a bad movie although Anouk Aimee seems in a coma in most scenes and inaudible as well. Howard was 37 when he made this, he's not handsome and he he looks 50 so his Kissie scenes with 19 year old Aimee are really gross and totally unbelievable. Other than that, it has some suspense and has a nice quick pace. I think I'll give it 6 instead of 5.