TWENTY FOUR HOURS TO KILL

UK, 1965, 94 minutes, Colour.
Mickey Rooney, Lex Barker, Walter Slezak, Michael Medwin.
Directed by Peter Bezencenet.

The title, 24 hours to kill, is a play on words: 24 hours of leisure to be filled up or 24 hours before someone is killed.
While the film is a British origin, it is something of a hybrid from the mid sixties, the type of international collaboration which was becoming popular, but not necessarily better. The film has an international cast, and was filmed principally in Lebanon with Lebanese financial backing.
The screenplay, written by an Australian Peter Yeldham, is not a master piece of plotting or dialogue. And the acting leaves a lot to be desired, especially from the supporting cast.
Mickey Rooney plays an air steward whose greed has got him involved in smuggling gold, and then keeping the gold. He uses his work as a means of smuggling. One of his principal employers is Lebanon-based, Walter Slezak, who has a motley band of assistant of thugs. When the plane on which Mickey Rooney is working develops engine trouble, it has to land in Beirut. Which means 24 hours before they can leave again, and Mickey Rooney wants to protect himself from his pursuers, not wanting to go to the police. In fact, Rooney usually plays an amiable character on screen, portrays a particularly obnoxious character here. He shows no redeeming features as he lies, is cowardly, and is surprisingly dispatched at the end.
Lex Barker is a suitably strong and serious pilot. Michael Medwin plays his womanising co-pilot.
One of the advantages of the film is that so much of it is in colour, a great deal of the city of Beirut, its buildings, its coast, its avenues.
For most of the time, the pilots and the crew are gathering to protect Rooney, but in Baalbeck, there is a kidnap attempt on the girlfriend of the pilot, he is involved in a marriage breakup, which means that the crew begin to suspect Rooney and Slezak begins to be more demanding, including another member of the crew taken as hostage.
All in all, this is a film which merely passes the time and not particularly well.