Run for the Sun

A solid little exotic thriller that boasts good location photography and that great staple of pulp yarns: ex-Nazis hiding in the jungle!

It's a mistake to regard this film as a remake of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. In that movie, plus films like TURKEY SHOOT and HARD TARGET, the plot is about antagonists who like to hunt down people like game animals. In RUN FOR THE SUN, however, the chase at the end is not a planned hunt on the part of the Nazis: they simply want to keep their whereabouts a secret from the world outside.

It's a nice touch to have bad guy Howard actually WANT Widmark to hang around the place because he stops jungle life from being so dull.

Viewed most of the films that Richard Widmark starred in, however, I finally discovered this film being shown on TV in the wee hours of the morning and found this to be a great film Classic. Richard Widmark, (Mike Latimer) and Jane Greer gave an outstanding performance together, sometimes fighting like cats and dogs and struggling to get away from Trevor Howard, (Browne) who plays a very wicked character who will stop at nothing to get just what he desires in life. This entire cast of actors all gave an outstanding performance, but Widmark and Greer really put their heart and soul into this picture. Jane Greer experience a spinal injury during the making of this film, and years later she became very ill and needed surgery, which corrected her problem. It was during a scene in this picture where Jane goes through swampy water which contains many dangerous viruses.

Richard Widmark, a Hemingway type writer who craves the solitude of J.D. Salinger, is found in an obscure Mexican village by Jane Greer. Jane's a reporter for a tattletale magazine, but Widmark doesn't find this out till they've started kanoodling. He offers to fly her back to Mexico City.

While enroute they go off course and crash in the jungle. They come upon an Englishman and a Dutch archaeologist, so they say. In reality it's a diplomat who was a member of the pro-Nazi Cliveden set and who defected during World War II. The Dutchman with him is really a former Wehrmacht high officer and his brother-in-law.

Trevor Howard and Peter Van Eyck don't want word of their secret to get out so Widmark and Greer have to die. Now starts the chase through the jungle like The Most Dangerous Game.

Of course this is a remake of that film, but the characters are a bit more complex. Widmark's an alcoholic writer who craves his privacy as much as Howard and Van Eyck do. Greer's a reporter who's gone after Widmark's story and now has an even bigger one potentially.

In the original film it was more of a morality play. Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks were certainly classical hero and villain respectively and Fay Wray was not the independent woman that Greer is.

Still this is a good remake helped a lot by the outdoor locations instead of RKO's backlot jungle.

This is a first rate remake (redesigned) of Richard Connell's classic suspense short story, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. If you are lucky, read the story. If you can't find it, see the 1932 movie with Joel McCrae, Leslie Banks (as the mad Count Zaharoff - General Zaharoff in the original short story), Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong. It captures the best aspects of the short story, but not all the clever details. Also, the sets were reused by the same production group (along with Fay Wray, Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot) for KING KONG shortly afterwords.

Basically the story goes like this. The hero is sole survivor of a shipwreck, and finds himself on an island owned by the villain. The villain, a master hunter, is insane, and has found there is only one game worth hunting - "the most dangerous game" or man, the only animal that one knows can think. He gives his "guests" (he has caused the shipwrecks) a good dinner or two, and then they proceed to run for their lives or until he kills them. But Rainsford (the hero in the original short story) is a trained hunter too. So for a change, Zaharoff really has a worthy opponent. The ending of the tale I will leave to the lucky reader.

But this 1956 film is an interesting version of the original. The scene shifts to an isolated jungle area of Mexico. Richard Widmark and Jane Greer are in a plane crash, and are rescued by Trevor Howard and Peter Van Eyck, both of whom are far from welcoming. Widmark is not sure, but he keeps thinking he knows Howard, although he's never seen him. Then he realizes it's Howard's voice - he heard it in World War II, as a Nazi propaganda figure (a British traitor). In short, Howard is a version of William Joyce, "Lord Haw Haw" (see SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR). Van Eyck is Howard's brother-in-law.

Howard and Van Eyck have been less than willing to help Widmark and Greer get back to civilization before, because they did not want to have them report them to the authorities - they are wanted for war crimes (at least Van Eyck is). Widmark, when he makes the mistake of discovering who his hosts are, suggests that if they help him and Greer get back, he can take a message to Howard's loved ones about their safety. Unfortunately, Howard explains, his wife and children were killed in the war by bombing. As it is apparent that Van Eyck wants to see the strangers dead, Widmark and Greer take off to try to get to safety. And then the story follows the lines of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME.

But ironically there is one more switch. Howard has been connected to Van Eyck only by the marriage - personally he has no liking for the man. As it turns out, he would not mind if he could get out of the jungle - away from this remnant of a bloody, horrific past. And so the film actually goes onto a somewhat different conclusion. But I leave it to the viewer to see what it is.

What initially looks as if it is going to be a character study of a washed-up Hemngway-type novelist wallowing in self-pity and local liquor in some tiny south American village suddenly changes tack to become a sort of remake of The Most Dangerous Game and, in truth, the first half of the plot was probably more interesting for me. Once Trevor Howard and Peter van Eyck are introduced as a Nazi sympathiser and war criminal hiding out in the jungle into which Widmark and Jane Greer crash land, the film pretty much forgets any ideas of delving into how Latimer can overcome the writer's block that is driving him towards self destruction and concentrates instead on a straightforward cat-and-mouse chase formula. That's not to say the second half of the film isn't enjoyable – it is: it just isn't as interesting as the first 40 minutes.

The film benefits greatly from location shooting, and all four principal characters give reasonable performances. Widmark is as reliable as ever, while Howard portrays Browne – the antithesis of all those stiff-upper-lipped WWII types he so often played – in exactly the same manner in which he played all those stiff-upper lip WWII types, and it works quite well. There's no hint of innate character deficiencies in the characterisations of the Nazi's either, no sneering disdain for anything non-German, no mad dreams of a resurgence of the Nazi dream. Howard and van Eyck are just a pair of criminals on the run, as desperate to escape their jungle prison as they are to evade capture.