Um Haaresbreite

Detective Sergeant Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and his longtime partner Detective Sergeant Gus Forbes (Don Beddoe) are assigned to travel to Chicago to bring the mobster's wife Mrs. Frankie Neal (Marie Windsor) to testify to the grand jury in Los Angeles against the mafia. They are ambushed at Mrs. Neal's building and Forbes is murdered by a mobster wearing a coat with fur.

Brown and Neal travel by train to LA and soon the detective realizes that there are hit men hired by the mafia to kill Mrs. Neal. However, the assassins do not know how she looks like, and Brown hides Neal in Forbes' room. Brown meets Ann Sinclair (Jacqueline White) in the restaurant, who is traveling with her annoying son Tommy and his nanny, and the mobsters believe that she is Mrs. Neal. Now Brown has to protect not only the unpleasant Mrs. Neal, but also Ann from the mobsters.

"The Narrow Margin" is a great film-noir with a tense story developed in an adequate pace and an unexpected plot point in the end. The direction is perfect and the cast has solid performances. The dialogs between Brown and Mrs. Neal are tough and her character does not worth a penny. I saw the excellent remake of this movie in the early 90's ("Margin Call") with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer, but unfortunately I had never seen the original movie. Today I have had the chance and I recommend it. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Rumo ao Inferno" ("Bound to Hell")

While director Richard Fleischer gets plenty of credit for his role in making the film noir classic "The Narrow Margin" on a shoestring budget, it is hard to imagine this picture without actor Charles McGraw in the lead role. As a tough cop escorting a witness to testify in Los Angeles, McGraw's performance is what holds the picture together. Try to think now of one actor around today who could portray a cop who is at times calculating, other times sarcastic and almost always menacing. In the Hollywood of the 1940s and 50s,Charles McGraw usually played secondary roles in A pictures. In "The Narrow Margin," McGraw shows that with a competent director, he could put on some performance as the star of a movie.

I'm a huge Charles McGraw fan. Every film he had a large part in, he excels and makes the film better.

Having seen this film 4 or 5 times, my respect for it has grown over the years.

The cinematography isn't perfect - the film probably could have benefited by staying dark and grainy as it seems to be in the early, night scenes.

The taut train scenes seem too bright, but there's nothing wrong with it, simply my preference. A darker train would have made for a more sinister film. Even so, there's plenty of excitement.

The crackling dialogue between Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor is consistently sharp. Seriously, you will have a hard time finding anything more bitter than those two. I'm not sure any other male-female could have made the dialogue (which in a 1950's way is almost corny) come off so terse, as they continuously bark at each other. Someone needs to count the number of times McGraw tells Windsor to "Shut up!".

The film has some exciting twists and turns; you'll enjoy each one.

Great story, solid performances all the way around. This is a FUN movie.

The Narrow Margin is excellent. It's too bad more of our new directors have forgotten how to make a great film with a minimal budget, using instead inventive camera angles, good characters and dialog, and some surprises along the way. I really loved Marie Windsor as the mobster's wife who's going to LA to sing to the Grand Jury. She's one of the toughest broads I've ever seen! Charles McGraw does his standard tough cop role and turns in a performance that sets the standard by which all others are judged.

This is the original, and beats the heck out of the re-make.....

Fast, smart and tough. A real treat. Masterfully paced and scripted. Wow. Holds up very very well. This movie sucks you in from the opening credits and never lets go. It's also a bit of a mind game, with an interesting moral dilemma at its center and a beautiful plot twist towards the end. Nobody tells a hysterical dame to "shut up" quite like Charles McGraw and few femme fatales can blow cigarette smoke quite like Marie Windsor (who looks astonishingly like the present day actress Illeana Douglas). The two of them have great smoldering chemistry together. Richard Fleischer's direction is nearly flawless. A joy to watch. Can't wait to see it again. There's a lot going on in this one. By no means, a routine thriller.