It may well have passed muster at the tail end of the war but seen today the flaws are there for all to see. Stewart Granger's working class accent is a joke and his wooden, over-the-top acting little better. John Mills phones it in as the 'decent' man who goes AWOL when he hears that wife, Joy Shelton, is stepping out with Granger's spiv whilst he, Mills, is doing his bit. The two best performances by a mile are turned in by Beatrice Varley and Alison Leggatt as Mills' mother and sister and Jean Kent weighs in with a passable cameo but the climactic fist fight between Purvis (Granger) and Colter (Mills) is embarrassing. Definitely a Waterloo sunset.

Waterloo Road, made towards the end of World War II, tells the story of a young squaddie played by Sir John Mills, who having heard about his wife running around with a no good local operator, goes AWOL to basically find his erring wife and give the chap in question a good old thick ear.Despite that being the entire plot in a nut shell, it is a fantastic piece of wartime nostalgia and a rather entertaining and charming little film to boot.It is chockablock full of air raids, wardens, shelters, old fashion saloon bars, and its cast list is practically a cinematic who's who of British Wartime cinema, although it is the two male leads that really steal the film.Stewart Granger is a thoroughly unlikable fellow in this film as the draft dodging spiv with a million brave guys wives to chose from and he plays his part magnificently, although at times his cockney slang-ridden accent does slip into his more characteristic well spoken Britisher.Sir John Mills was never really used much in the guise of a physical tough guy, and after watching Waterloo Road it is not too hard to understand why. Despite the consummate and expert actor he undoubtedly was, he was on the whole, officer/ministry material and the fisty cuffs he displays in Waterloo Road, although well choreographed is not how the most majestic of our British acting knights should be perceived or indeed behave.The final outcome of the Mills/Granger bout was also a little unbelievable, which is why they probably had Granger clasp his heart halfway through, as I'm sure in reality, Granger would have torn him to shreds, with the audience all to aware of the fact.But still a pleasant little wartime ditty in to South London. Give it a go.

Waterloo Road is sometimes forgotten among the hundreds of films made by the late, great Sir John Mills, but it gave him one of his best roles at a time when British Film studios were churning out a handful of films each week for to satisfy the public.He plays Jim Colter, a former railway employee, now called up who goes AWOL to find Ted Purvis (Stewart Granger), a spiv and draft dodger who is seeing his wife (an excellent performance by Joy Shelton). The action takes place over a single day in, and around, Waterloo Station. In almost social realism style the camera follows the action through real streets, and includes an early amusement arcade (check those machines and the customers), a dance hall, tea shop and a tattoo parlour in a road called 'The Cut'. I watched this with my Mother(now 79)as its her favourite John Mills Film, and she remembers passing by this parlour and seeing the 'tattooed lady' poster when, as a 14 year old shop assistant, she worked at Waterloo Station during the blitz.It is a well crafted film: not many scenes are wasted and the script is tight and balanced between light and serious dialogue. Another surprise is how energetic Mills is. He leaps across tables and through windows like an acrobat. The fight scene is as well filmed and choreographed as any American Film Noir of the time, and even allowing for library clips of the blitz (which can be seen in other wartime films), the bombing sequence is as close to the real thing as the studio could make it.My favourite performance and /or character? Ben Williams playing the hapless Military Policeman Corporal Lewis forever chasing Mills around 'The Cut'. How often are films today enhanced by the Extra Players?

"Waterloo Road" deserves to be better known than it is. If, like me, you were born after the war, it is a fascinating glimpse of a time gone by, but don't watch it for that alone. It is a story about ordinary people in wartime, without heroics and melodrama, but with an abundance of character and incident. The characters struck me as being true to life, and I didn't find a jarring line of dialogue or a scene which dragged. John Mills gave a fine performance as a soldier gone AWOL, and Stewart Granger as the cad out to seduce his wife. All in all, a wonderful little film.