The Reckoning (1969 film)

The Reckoning is a 1969 British drama film released by Columbia Pictures directed by Jack Gold and starring Nicol Williamson, Ann Bell, Rachel Roberts and Zena Walker. Music by Malcolm Arnold.

A contemporary and penetrating social drama about a ruthless business executive who returns home to his Liverpudlian roots to investigate his father’s death. Nicol Williamson produces an intense and compelling performance as the reprehensible hero conflicted by his old and new lifestyles – the high-powered London business world he has entered with his middle class life and the working class streets of Liverpool where he came from and which draws him back. This brutal drama about class in Britain was a contemporary production with Up The Junction and Room At The Top and it also preceded Get Carter, but it was in many ways more original and credible.

Michael "Mick" Marler has risen up through the ranks at Grenville, a large British company specializing in business machines. Despite his drive and polished air, Mick comes from a tough working-class background and has worked hard to fit into the posh world in which he and his social-climbing wife Rosemary (Ann Bell) live. His marriage consists of little more than animalistic lovemaking in between traded insults and long silences with his wife.

One morning, while Mick is trying to save his boss, John Hazlitt, from losing face in the company from mistakes and sagging sales in his division, he convinces Hazlitt to push the company board to enter the computer market, something that they had decided against in the late 1950s. After his idea is readily accepted by Hazlitt, Mick gets a call from Rosemary informing him that his father, John Joe, is near death in Liverpool. Mick wants to leave immediately, but is coerced into first completing a report for Hazlitt. Despite his new wealth, Mick has remained a tough, but sentimental, Liverpudlian of Irish descent. He then drives his Jaguar to the working class Liverpool neighborhood where he grew up and is forced to address the sizeable chip on his shoulder.

When he gets to his father's bedside, he is shattered to discover that John Joe has died. When Mick lovingly kisses his father, he is disturbed to see several dark bruises on the body. After questioning his mother, his sister Kath, the parish priest and the family physician Dr. Carolan, Mick goes to the local Irish social hall to speak with Cocky Burke, his father's best friend. Cocky tells Mick that John Joe, who was a popular amateur Irish balladeer, had a heart attack at a pub after some English "Teddy boys" started a fight, then punched and kicked him. Mick tries to convince Cocky to go to the police, but Cocky, who hates and distrusts the English authorities, tells Mick that he must avenge his father.

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