El látigo

I never would have called myself a big fan of boxing or movies about boxing, but I've seen my fair share at this point. Whiplash is a movie that has boxing as a key plot element, but it's debatable how much this movie is focused on the sport. It's more like a mix of noir and romance in my mind. The problem is, I don't know how invested I was in the romance between the 2 leads. I certainly didn't want her getting together with the other guy, but I didn't feel many sparks between Dane Clark and Alexis Smith. One of my struggles with this film, and most plots of this type, is the fact that they rely on one of the romantic leads simply refusing to communicate properly. So many issues crop up because they don't talk about their history, or what might happen to the other person if they get involved. Nearly every story of love needs some type of conflict to make it interesting, but this method of creating a rift between two people just feels played out and a bit lazy. But even without that part of the plot there simply wasn't much that I found to latch onto in this film that was enjoyable or original. I'm about a week or two removed from when I watched Whiplash and I'm already starting to forget it. This is a film that won't stick with me, even though it's not a bad at all.

Shake together John Garfield's roles as a violinist in Humoresque and a prizefighter in Body and Soul (hits of the previous couple of years), and out comes Dane Clark's character in Whiplash. He's a beach bum who daubs canvases in a coastal town near San Francisco. But when reclusive vacationer Alexis Smith buys one of his seascapes, she ignites a torch in him that won't sputter out. When she abruptly departs, he travels east and sets up a studio in New York while he tracks her down. It proves a bad career move.

He finds Smith singing in a nightclub, only to discover that she's married to Zachary Scott, its owner and a former middleweight champ now confined to a wheelchair. Scott, sadistic and embittered, lives the fight game vicariously – through the cohort of ex-boxers who keep his wife in place and through new talent he exploits then drops. In Clark, he sees a contender. Wanting to keep close to Smith (who keeps warning him off), Clark signs up for work on another kind of canvas....

In addition to the always welcome Alexis Smith, the movie boasts good supporting work from Eve Arden, a gal pal with a crush on Clark, and from Jeffrey Lynn, as Smith's alcoholic brother, a doctor working in Scott's gym. Scott himself brings nothing new to the kind of part he found himself typecast in: the effete, insinuating villain. That leaves Clark, who was plainly being groomed as the second-string Garfield but who never left much of an impression on the movies.

The direction, by the undistinguished Lewis Seiler, can only be graded adequate; he keeps things moving along but never tries for anything different or offbeat or striking. In this he's matched by a lackluster script (it was the late ‘40s; couldn't the dialogue have been a little more etched?). Nonetheless, Whiplash endures as a routine B-movie, with noirish coloration, that reflects the themes and plot-lines of post-war melodrama.

Mike (Dane Clark) is a nice guy who loves to paint. One day, he meets Laurie and they fall in love. However, Laurie is an odd one...hot one minute, cold the next. And, soon, without warning, she simply disappears. Not surprisingly, Mike is a mess and spends a lot of time looking for her. His search leads him back east and he eventually learns that she's the wife of a hood. Rex (Zachary Scott) is a rich, menacing sort of guy who seems, at times, like a cat playing with mice. So, when he offers to train Mike and make him a champion boxer, you know that somehow it's all part of Rex's machinations...and you wonder WHAT he has in mind for his wife and Mike.

This film has some wonderful and snappy noir-style dialog. So much of what Rex says seems to be oozing with menace and the writers did a nice job of this one. It also helped that although this was more of a 'second-stringer' sort of movie with the lesser stars at Warner, they all are simply terrific. My only complaint, and it's a problem in most boxing films, is that the matches are unrealistic...with WAY too many punches being thrown and landed throughout the fights. Still, a hard-hitting film with lots to recommned it.

By the way, I was originally going to give this one an 8. However, the ending turned out to be so cool and satisfying, it earned an extra point. WOW...what a finale!

Although the main character planed by Dane Clark is the odd combination of artist/boxer, the movie is fairly involving and exciting. As he gets swept up by bad girl Alexis Smith -- and with bad guy Zachary Scott (one of the best in the business)luring him to destruction -- his story has some unpredictable ups and downs. A great cast in a fast-paced tale.

Boxing film. But it takes a long time to get there. At the beginning, Mike (Dane Clark) tell the kids how he used to a fighter, and then we're in flashback. We see how he was an artist when he met Laurie (Alexis Smith). He gets in a brawl, and is talked into earning big money as a boxer. Fun co-stars... SZ Sakall Cuddles was in every single b&w film in the 1940s, along with Alan Hale Senior. Hale was Dad of The Skipper, on Gilligan's Island. Eve Arden and Zack Scott were both so awesome in Mildred Pierce. A couple of fun numbers done at the Pelican Club; a ballad "sung" by Laurie, and a fun bit by "a vocal group", according to imdb; it's a shame they aren't credited in the cast list or the Soundtrack page, as of today. It looks like they changed the lyrics from A Girl to The Guy when it's sung by a female group. The story is good enough, but it never really takes off. The first five minutes the film really jumps around, so i hope you don't get seasick. Directed by Lewis Seiler. Started in silents, making shorts. This one is okay. Not a lot of chemistry, but the story is sound.