Dir: John Berry
SIFF Theater
Unfortunately the festival ended early for me and with more of a whisper than a bang. I had seen this on Turner Classic Movies before and had completely forgotten about it until around the five minute mark. The movie stars John Garfield (his last film ever) as a crook that gets talked into robbing a guy carrying payroll money. Things go south and his buddy is killed and Garfield kills a cop. He's paranoid and sweet talks his way into Shelley Winter's life where he takes her and her parents and little brother hostage. But not hostages in a way that you would think or that even makes since, they're hostages that are allowed to leave! As long as one stays with him, the rest can go to work, school, etc.. It's pretty frustrating to watch these characters with so much freedom not be able to come up with a way to overpower or out-think this one hood. It makes the film feel like a twenty minute television episode that's been stretched out to feature length, but that length is only 70 minutes. Every character is utterly unlikeable making it hard to judge the performances because you want them all to get shot. To it's credit there are a few really great scenes where we get a glimpse of Garfield's loneliness or a particularly nice moment where the little brother attacks Garfield but, all in all a lackluster affair that doesn't end soon enough.
The film is note worthy for having almost everyone involved in it getting blacklisted, the reason it is Garfield's final film.
4/10
a P.S. - special thanks to Colin & Holly for hosting me over the weekend, thanks for the hospitality! or the horse brutality
No comments:
Post a Comment