Desperate

This Black and White film from the late 40's had a great deal of class and great acting. Steve Brodie,(Steve Randall),"Frankenstein Island",'81, played a guy who had all the bad breaks and never seemed to be able to settle down with the gal or off spring and have a nice home in a small country town. Audrey Lang,(Anne Randall),"Born to Kill",'47, was the wife of Steve Randall who did her best to help him make the right decisions and even got him to marry her. Steve and Ann Randall kept running away from a terrible threat made by Raymond Burr,(Walt Radak),"San Quentin",'46, who was seeking revenge for the loss of a close family member. Jason Robards Sr., (Detective Lt., Louie Ferrari),"Impact",'49, played the detective who was very interested in Steve Randall and hounded him where ever he traveled. There are some very tense scenes in which Walt Radak uses a clock to drive Steve Randall to a complete breaking point in his life. Great classic B film with a very young looking Raymond Burr and Jason Robards Sr. giving a great supporting role.

Steve Randall is a truck driver looking forward to a romantic night in with his new wife after four months of marriage. However when he gets a call for a last minute transit job for the fee of $50 he can't say no. When he gets to the job he finds that he is working for Walt Radak and the cargo is actually goods being stolen from a warehouse. Alerting a passing police officer sees the officer get shot and Radak's younger brother caught by the cops; to get him out Radak tells Steve to go to the police and confess that he forced the kid to do the job for him, either that or Radak's boys will pay a visit to Steve's wife. Instead of going to the cops though, Randall alerts his wife and flees the city with both the criminals (helped by ex-PI Lavitch) and the police (in the shape of Det Lt Ferrari).

This film opens with a light tone that does little to prepare you for how quickly it all goes wrong for Steve and it is not long before he is fleeing the mob and the police. However, although it never settles back into that light tone, it does take the foot off the gas several times and produces a film that is a series of good moments rather than being a constantly taut thriller. Having said that though, the strong moments more than make up for the dips where the film develops the story and plays on the emotions of the characters – when this is tough, it is excellent and very much captures what made the "more is less" spirit of 40's/50's crime noirs so enjoyable. Steve's initial beating is played out in a dark room with a swinging lampshade; the final standoff takes place in a stairwell that is all shadows and banister; while the ambivalence of the cops and criminals make for an interesting set up.

Although the characters are not taken as deep as noir would normally require (Steve is too clean cut and not enough is made of the police using Steve as bait) the characters are still tough. Brodie is not great but does well enough despite being rather too nice for the lead role. Long is OK and luckily the film gives her limited time and concentrates on the dark rather than the dame. Burr is tremendously menacing – not a crime lord but a tough hood who remains sane throughout and is all the more menacing for being out of the picture until the end. Robards is a bit too whimsical where I would have preferred him to be cynical and uncaring, but he was still good. Support is also good from Fowley, Challee and others.

Overall this would have been a bit better if it had been a bit darker in terms of action and character as well as being more consistent in its tension but, despite what could have been, it is still enjoyably tense and tough and features good performances and some typically noir use of darkness and light in the cinematography.

This 40s noir B-movie has quite a solid reputation, but its plot is strictly second-rate. Steve Brodie plays an average joe, a truck driver not long out of the army and recently married to a lush wife who bakes cakes to celebrate the fact that she is pregnant. Sadly, hubby never gets to taste her culinary skills because he accepts a last minute lucrative driving job that turns out to be crooked. Raymond Burr's gang of crooks haven't got their own vehicle so, bizarrely, they decide to hire one to carry out a warehouse theft and, one dead cop later, Brodie finds himself on the run as a cop-killer.

Mann's direction is better than the plot. He wasn't scared to try something different every now and then. At one point we're even given a blurry POV close-up of Burr's retreating fist after it has connected with Brodie's face. Burr plays the heavy here, as he usually did in his early career. He was a big man even before he put a few pounds on, but looks swarthy here as well, almost Mediterranean. He's certainly the most interesting character in the film, a gangster out to save his brother from the electric chair and endeavouring to have our relatively bland hero take his place.

The main weakness in the storyline is the hero's poor decision-making. He practically panics each time danger is at hand, and yet delays contacting the police for an inordinate length of time so that the villains can more or less pursue him at their leisure.

This is undoubtedly better than its modest production values would suggest, but it isn't a classic by any measure.

... in this "B" crime drama from RKO and director Anthony Mann. A hapless truck driver named Steve (Steve Brodie) gets unwittingly caught up in a robbery that leads to a cop's death and the arrest of the little brother of chief crook Walt Radak (Raymond Burr). Radak wants revenge on Steve for his brother's situation, and the gangster threatens Steve's pregnant wife Anne (Audrey Long). Steve and Anne hit the road to try and escape, and their circumstances continue to get worse.

There are a lot of rough edges on this crime picture, but I liked it anyway. The first half of the story could have been subtitled "A series of increasingly poor decision making" on the part of Steve. Things settle down for the second half, where things become a bit more brooding and almost nihilistic before snapping out of it.

Brodie and Long are both likable leads, even if they aren't the most gifted actors. Burr is terrific as the menacing brute Radak, even before he packed on the pounds as Perry Mason. And this may be the best role that I've seen Jason Robards Sr in. After a career stretching way back into the silents. He plays the cold-blooded, cynical police detective on the case with just the right angle to his smirk. There are a lot of reprehensible characters filling out the background, from Douglas Fowley as an oily P. I., to Cy Kendall as a loathsome used car salesman.

This film, and others like it from that era, has something which has long been missing from suspense/crime movies of today: a slow-to-build menace. Things develop almost leisurely, and then--Burr, that menace personified, pounces like a rabid dog hounding Steve Brodie. The pay-off is so much more effective when a director takes the time to build the foundation of suspense. The characters are well-developed, Detective Ferrari in particular. He starts out as an antagonist and ends up, reluctantly, on the side of truth and justice. Brodie's backstory hints at a checkered past. The ending, as Steve faces death at midnight, the clock ticking away, is played out in what seems to be real-time. It was truly a nail-biter. Satisfying and captivating all the way.