The Reckoning – 1969 | 111 mins | Drama | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Deeply penetrating social drama about a ruthless business executive who returns home to Liverpool to investigate his father’s death. Nicol Williamson produces an intense and compelling performance as the reprehensible hero besieged on two fronts – the high-powered London business world he has adopted and the working class streets of Liverpool to which he is drawn back.This brutal drama about class in Britain is no Room at the Top, but it’s well handled nonetheless.

Tough but troubled businessman Michael Marler (Nicol Williamson) is a lower-class Liverpudlian of Irish descent who has clawed his way to the top in the London business word and become trapped in a loveless marriage to wealthy wife Rosemary (Ann Bell). His marriage consists of little more than animalistic lovemaking in between traded insults and long silences with his wife. When he learns his father is dying, he returns to Liverpool and is forced to deal with the sizeable chip on his shoulder.

Returning to his roots and former terrace home, Marler observes bruises over his now-deceased father’s body; he discovers that his father had been in a bar brawl with a gang of Teddy Boys spewing anti-Irish abuse.Whilst awaiting his father’s funeral, Marler returns to London, but his increasingly abrasive behaviour puts his job and marriage in jeopardy. He ventures back to Liverpool and feels torn by his working class roots and a desire to avenge his father, and the more liberal demands of his middle class ambition.He finally decides to take revenge on the particular teenager who attacked his father.