Victim is both a fine thriller and a landmark social problem film with a tragic dimension that makes the "thriller" tag seem vaguely anomalous. It was the first British film to concern itself with homosexuals and their vulnerability, the plot revolving around a vicious blackmail scheme of the sort encouraged by anti-sodomy laws. A prominent barrister, suppressing anxiety over his own (unconsummated) homosexuality, ignores the attempts of a persecuted young friend to contact him. Following the boy's prison suicide, the barrister begins a hunt for his blackmailers that takes him, and the film, on a tour of the "other" London, where men from all walks of life get together, at risk of their careers and, sometimes, their lives. The film is not without stereotypes; in the mix of genres, queerness itself becomes both mystery and problem. But Dirk Bogarde gives a fine and, in the circumstances, courageous performance as the barrister who stands apart from his own life, an uncommitted husband and uncommitted homosexual.