Much to his chagrin tough detective, Truman (Stanley Baker) is reassigned to juvenile liaison. His first day on the new job sees him taking home a couple of youngsters involved in a petty crime. At their home he meets their older sister Cathie (Anne Heywood) and older brother Johnny (David McCallum), who is a rock ‘n’ roll tearaway. Despite his new role Truman can’t shake the last case he was working on involving a spate of arson attacks. He begins to develop a romantic interest in Cathie and slowly begins to link Johnny to the fires. “Violent Playground” has an excellent script by James Kennaway that strikes a good balance between the challenges presented to the police by juvenile crime and the struggles of a broken working class family living in poverty in an inner-city estate. His dialogue is convincing and the characters, on both sides of the law, are vivid and well-drawn. Kennaway and director Basil Dearden make their points clearly and their linking of early-years criminality to squalid estates and decaying environments is made effectively and with relative restraint. The only false step comes with the over-ripe linking of delinquency to rock ‘n’ roll, particularly the sequence where Johnny is behaving normally then suddenly goes into a menacing dancing frenzy when he hears some tunes on the record player. The classroom hostage climax is gripping and cleverly directed by Dearden who extracts every ounce of tension from the situation. The cast is good - Stanley Baker is thoroughly absorbing and has the hardman cop routine down to a fine art. Anne Heywood is brash, angry and full of distrust of the “bluebottles”, while Peter Cushing puts in an quiet, strong, understated turn as the local priest. David McCallum steals the show, however, as the sullen, unpredictable, semi-psychotic gang leader and “firefly”, Johnny. His performance is all gloomy rage and Brandoesque moodiness. “Violent Playground” has elements of melodrama but overall it is a gritty and grim look a delinquency and inner-city poverty. It manages to be literate and informed, delivering a gripping story of a delinquent pyromaniac and an unlikely romance allied to some pointed social commentary. ( )