"The Hasty Heart" didn't make much of a splash when it opened on Broadway a few seasons ago. John Patrick's play about a dour, friendless Scot in a British army hospital in Burma was perhaps a trifle unconventional for New York audiences. The fact that the Scot is slowly dying, although he doesn't know it, gave the play an undertone of tragedy. "The Hasty Heart" fared better in summer stock, where it has become a standby.

Now, in movie form, the drama is at its best in its treatment of Patrick's penetrating and witty dialogue, most of which occurs in outbursts of temper between Lachie, the hero, and his well-meaning hospital mates. The film-makers were wise in keeping almost all the play's lines, as well as the story, intact. Lachie, who is convincingly and warmly played by Richard Todd, enters the hospital without knowing exactly what is wrong with him. The men in his ward--Digger, Kiwi, Tommy, Yank, and Blossom, the Basuto--all know he is doomed, and do their best to make things easy for him.

From the start it's obvious that Lachie is as he says, "a man who does not make friends easily." He is, in fact, a man with a grudge against the world. The lonely Scot gradually discovers the meaning of friendship, and even manages to fall in love with his nurse, who is tenderly and winningly played by Patricia Neal. John Patrick's play was skillfully constructed and written, and these virtues have fortunately been preserved in the movie. "The Hasty Heart" may not preserved any starting ideas, but it is a fine treatment of an uncommon kind of man and his uncommon--but extremely human--emotions.

If you've detested Mickey Rooney in the past, you'll detest the little guy even more in "The Big Wheel," which is on the same bill as "The Hasty Heart." "The Big Wheel" is about auto racing, and, to be perfectly blunt, it stinks.