Bodyguard

This film is not about bodyguards. It is based on a story co-authored by the 23 year-old Robert Altman, his first screen credit. Dick Fleischer, just getting into his stride, here directs his first noir thriller, which was followed the next year by his brilliant 'The Clay Pigeon'. This film is not brilliant, but it is good, and would have been better if many minutes had not been cut out of it. Lawrence Tierney (no relation to Gene Tierney), who for years was a reliable tough guy, here plays a sympathetic cop who wants to get rough with the bad guys and is thrown off the Force, briefly taking on a bodyguard role (though that is just incidental), and becomes enmired in a frame-up and plenty of trouble. His doting girl friend is played charmingly by Priscilla Lane, in her last film before retiring from the screen at the age of 33. Tierney has a knockabout charm of his own, and grim-faced though he tends to be, can be grimly determined to nail the baddies and not only grimly determined to be wicked, as he was in other movies. There is a lot of harrowing business in a meat-packing plant, with dangerous saws and hooks on all sides, people getting killed by them, etc. So the menace is not spared. This is a solid if light-weight B thriller.

BODYGUARD (1948) is a snappy 62-min. b&w noir programmer directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Lawrence Tierney. Rather than repeat what others have said here, I'd rather emphasize a couple of things that truly distinguish this film. For one thing, it was filmed largely on location at sites all over Los Angeles. Ex-policeman Mike Carter (Lawrence Tierney), trying to clear himself of a false murder charge, moves around L.A. quite vigorously in the course of his investigation, sometimes by car, sometimes by cab, and sometimes on foot, traveling to shops, offices, back alleys, factories, piers, and amusement arcades all over the city. If you like seeing film footage of L.A. in the 1940s, there are many films with abundant footage, but none quite like this one.

Also, I'd like to single out a very clever scene that offers an ingenious method of secretly transmitting key information from one location to another in the era before fax machines, cell phones, or e-mail. Carter needs the contents of a case file kept by the police officer whose murder he's been framed for. Only his girlfriend, Doris (Priscilla Lane), who works in the department, can find the file for him. He tells her over the phone to write down all the important cases handled by the officer in the past year and then go to an amusement arcade on 3rd Street, find a "Record Your Own Voice" booth and read all the cases into the microphone onto as many vinyl records (78 rpm) as needed, and then to leave the stack of records for him at the cashier's counter under an assumed name. Carter's plan is to go to the arcade, give the assumed name, enter an available booth and listen to the records until he finds the case he's looking for. There are wonderful little details of character and street life woven into the scene (and just about every scene in the movie). When Carter first enters the arcade, the brassy blonde at the counter is flirting with two sailors and claims not to know anything about a stack of records for a "Mr. Nolan." An anxious Carter gets insistent and the two sailors turn on him, spoiling for a fight. Only then does the manager come over and defuse the situation and find the package of records for Carter. It's just a brief moment but it not only adds to the suspense, but captures so much of the tenor of the time and place.

The basic plot itself-corrupt industrialist covers up shady business practices via murder and convenient frame-ups-would get recycled ad infinitum on TV cop shows in the 1970s. But it might have seemed somewhat fresh back in 1948, especially after ALL MY SONS (also 1948), based on Arthur Miller's play, raised a similar issue in a drama of a wartime industrialist who sends out defective airplane parts with tragic results.

Id like to think Altman (24 at the time) wrote that Mike Carter listening to the Exposition Lady on the Many Records scene himself (it slaps, especially the bit where the woman talks to the person listening in), plus that amusing set piece at the eye doctor's office.

Bodyguard is somewhat Meat and Potatoes 'Some-Mug-Set-Me-Up-Ill-Find-Out-Who-Can't-Go-To-the-Cops-Whaddaya-Crazy piece of pulp, elevated by some decent if occasionally uncanny direction from Fleischer (watch for those EXTREME close-ups and quick zoom-ins - say, maybe this did influence Altman after all) and in particular Tierney, who plays this ex-homicide detective turned bodyguard turned Man Solving His Own Frame-Job with some quick skills, a bit of wit and a number of swift punches and choke-holds (not to mention disguises, re that Eye doctor scene). Everyone else here is more or less serviceable, but his presence single-handedly makes it compelling; in another world, he couldve been a more hard-boiled Dick Tracy.

I'm not sure if it would be quite as memorable without its star and a few above average twists (and one I called halfway through... Yeah, I wasn't quick on the draw this time). A true blue B movie that goes by like reading a crumpled paperback on a commute.

(Really, much as I kid, the Altman part is a bit of a foot-note, one of four credited writers, and he didn't go back to movies gor another nine years)

Up until a few weeks ago, I only knew cult 40s tough guy Lawrence Tierney from his role in Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS (1991); recently, however, I managed to watch his 2 vehicles released on DVD by Warners as part of their "Film Noir Collection Vol. 2", namely DILLINGER (1945) and BORN TO KILL (1947). This Richard Fleischer film, then, would be my third from Tierney's short period of glory.

Actually, the actor is the best thing about the whole movie - whose story, amazingly, was co-written by a very young Robert Altman! - as it's certainly a minor noir, albeit an enjoyable one; indeed, Tierney's cynical, no-nonsense attitude (reminiscent of Bogart, Mitchum and Robert Ryan) provides a good deal of amusement throughout. Still, the plot - a discredited cop uncovering corruption in a meat-packing company, when appointed to protect the elderly female proprietor - is nothing special and also kind of dreary; besides, the jovial personality of leading lady Priscilla Lane is as much unsuited to Tierney's hard-boiled façade as she is to the inherent bleakness of the genre!

Slick,speedy 'B' thriller with on(and off!)screen tough guy Lawrence Tierney as a suspended cop eventually agreeing to do some work on the side as a bodyguard for a wealthy family.The plot is inevitably fairly routine,but there are some well-handled scenes,and it remains watchable.One fact not usually mentioned;this was the final screen appearance of Priscilla Lane(best known for her roles in WARNER BROS. classics in the 30's,and Hitchcock's SABOTEUR);she was still far too young and surely had more years ahead as a screen actress.Her performance in her screen bow is OK,like Tierney and the rest of the cast.Director Richard Flesicher had better 'B' efforts up his sleeve though(THE NARROW MARGIN),a few years later.