The Informers was filmed at Pinewood Studios and at various locations around London, including the Thames Embankment, Westminster, Soho, Paddington, Covent Garden, Hampstead and Golders Green.

[2] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Freshly written and shot, with an eye for realism, against settings that are always recognisably London, this effectively indigenous cops and robbers thriller is the sort of old hat that could probably teach some of our "new wave" directors a thing or two.

Without overstraining the point, both Alun Falconer's script and Ken Annakin's direction suggest an observation of life rather than a re-statement of other movies, and enable the excellent cast to use their varied talents just that much more convincingly than such an ingenuously routine theme would seem to demand.

This applies particularly to Derren Nesbitt's playboy pimp and Maggie Whiting's very human prostitute, but one is no less drawn to familiar faces, like that of Allan Cuthbertson, playing an unpleasantly officious policeman, and Nigel Patrick fits comfortably into the role of the thwarted stalwart of the Yard, whose semi-detached home is, incidentally, quite splendidly authentic.

The characters might be stereotypes – the tough but honest detective and his loyal, long-suffering wife, the seedy criminal mastermind and his dangerously flashy front-man, the hard-bitten but vulnerable whore, the irredeemably shifty snout – but they come across as quirkily individual and there is little of the cosy moralising that afflicts so many British crime thrillers.