Le destin est au tournant

As other reviewers point out, America's favorite little guy was at a career crossroads at this point (1953). All in all, this downbeat low-budget caper film was a gutsy choice for MGM's former golden boy. Not only is Rooney's Eddie Shannon a rather pathetically repressed and vulnerable nobody, but the script stays entirely within that character, allowing Rooney none of his usual assertive (and often annoying) antics. The result is perhaps the biggest departure of his career, and also perhaps the most moving.

The film itself is a good one, benefiting from unfamiliar Southern Cal locations, excellent acting from a number of up-&-comers, Jack Kelly , Kevin McCarthy, et al., and a plausible script. As a caper film, it's inferior to the best ones of that decade (The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, etc.), but as an account of one man's sad and lonely plight (never a Hollywood biggie), it holds its own with the best of them, thanks to Rooney.

A shy Los Angeles mechanic and weekend racer (Mickey Rooney) is duped into being the getaway driver for bank robbers played by Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly. It seems as if they have a rather elaborate plot to hook him into their scheme by using McCarthy's girlfriend played by attractive Dianne Foster as lure for the shy and withdrawn Rooney who only has his job and his racing trophies to keep him going. It all works fairly well and shows how an innocent person is lured into doing something he would never ordinarily do with the bait being implied sex. Rooney is really good but so are both Kevin McCarthy and his partner played by Jack Kelly. The robbery itself occurs in Palm Springs and does not disappoint in execution with Kelly especially good as the gunman cracking jokes as he accompanies the head teller to the bank followed by the getaway car (which was souped up by Rooney). The film's title comes into play as Rooney drives like mad over a twisting mountain road back to the highway in under twenty minutes. All the elements of the story are mixed pretty well with a tough ending.

Richard Quine probably has his best "non comedy" film with this one, but maybe has to take the rap also for what's weak about this film. The opening car race and the key bank "race" are pretty blandly done as is any other action set piece in the movie. The opening scene is really poor, like something you'd see in a film made in the Early silent days. Badly matched rear projection, the camera angle is so wrong in the rear projection that is doesn't match the action of Rooney driving at all. The process work isn't bad, the footage shot is. The rest of the race material is also poor. And for a film about the ability to race, the fact that the racing is bad can't be overlooked. After this crappy beginning the excellent performances and dialog drive the film along perfectly. Most of the cast is perfect and the personal violence between characters is very strong. Rooney is very understated here--in many of his other adult work he'd tend to over act, not here though at all. It's an award worthy performance.

Just too bad that the action is treated like sloppy second unit work--some say (un)credited to Blake Edwards himself--but with Edwards interest in fast cars etc., hard to believe he'd shoot this stuff so badly. The ending, which also involves some action is perfunctorily done and the resolution too quick. Too bad because otherwise this would be a nearly perfect movie. Still if you get over, the opening especially, this is a must see.

Is there such a thing as a male weeper? Bang The Drum Slowly certainly belongs, as do parts of The Knute Rockne Story (`Let's win this one for the Gipper!'). Probably the whole athlete-dying-young genre does for men what Stella Dallas did for women. Another candidate for inclusion is Drive A Crooked Road, a 1954 noir starring Mickey Rooney.

Rooney's abbreviated stature helped keep him in pictures as America's oldest teen-ager. But once he hit 30, it was inevitable that adult roles should come his way. As the noir cycle was in full swing, that's where he landed. In The Strip and Quicksand, he still managed to pass as a stripling. By the time of this movie, however, he was well into his 30s, with broad hits of chubbiness settling into his face and midriff. He was still the star, not yet relinquished to character roles, though it was unclear how to handle him. So he became a misfit – a `freak.'

He's an awkward, lonely auto mechanic with dreams of driving someday in the Grand Prix – dreams he knows won't come true. With one exception, his fellow mechanics tease him mercilessly, especially about his lack of sexual experience. One day an unattainable woman (Dianne Foster) gives him the big eye, and he succumbs, however tentatively at first. (His ache for her is palpable when she plays hard to get, as he tosses on his rooming-house bed with his few racing trophies now emblems of hollow triumph). But she's just a cat's-paw for her real boyfriend, Kevin McCarthy, living the high life in his beach-house bachelor pad; he's planning to knock over a bank in Palm Springs and needs Rooney as his daredevil driver. With Foster's increasingly reluctant urging, Rooney signs on....

The resolution, of course, is the falling out of thieves; a large portion of the plot was to be echoed, 10 years later, in Don Siegel's remake of The Killers. Though the robbery and escape should have been the centerpiece, or at least the central set-piece, of the movie, here it seems curiously perfunctory (these comments are based on viewing a version some minutes short of recorded running times, however). But the movie's staying power lies in Rooney's portrayal of the dupe, the victim – all the more memorable for being so understated.

If you've seen Quicksand and Killer McCoy, you know that Mr. Rooney was, at the core, a serious actor and entertainer. He tries hard to make his character believable in this film, but the script ultimately lets him down. He manages to deliver a great performance anyway!

A shoutout to the director for not using music during certain important sequences. An even bigger shoutout to composer George Duning, ultimately a five-time Oscar nominee, for an engaging score nonetheless.

Worth one watch.