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Video Reviews : ****Excellent***Good**Fair*Poor : <i> Recent releases, reviewed by Times critics.</i> : Movies

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<i> Compiled by Terry Atkinson</i>

**** “Odd Man Out.” Paramount. $19.95.

An IRA man (James Mason) is wounded during a reckless bank robbery intended to raise funds for the movement. Separated from his comrades, he wanders through Belfast: bleeding, trying to find friends, with death constantly at his heels. Shot in wild angles (by Robert Krasker) and draped in shadows that reflect the fever and torment of a desperate man, “Odd Man Out” is a minor classic of suspense and wayward redemption. Director Carol Reed winds us through this maze of low-life with a rapid, near-drunken instinct for grace and terror; Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack and the others make a rich gallery of human grotesques; and, as doomed Johnny McQueen, Mason gave the finest performance of his early career.

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