Whiplash

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.

Boring boxing melodrama. I don't want to call it a film noir because it doesn't have any film noir style, in my opinion. Dane Clark plays a moody painter who falls in love with a woman (Alexis Smith) who buys one of his paintings. She skips out on him so he follows her to New York, where he discovers she is married to evil cripple Zachary Scott. Then things get weird as Clark decides to become a boxer for Scott. His motivation for this was cloudy, to say the least. He decides to box under the name Mike Angelo (get it -- Michaelangelo -- because he's a painter, you see). From here, a movie with wobbly knees is knocked down for the count. The cast is unimpressive but not terrible. Clark is pretty unlikable in a role tailor-made for John Garfield. Smith is forgettable. Eve Arden is great when she's around, which isn't much. Pretty standard stuff. No surprises.

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.

The thing that surprised me the most about Whiplash is that Warner Brothers actually teamed Alexis Smith and Dane Clark for a film. Smith had a lot of trouble in her career because she was so tell and trouble finding leading men to appear opposite her. And Dane Clark was short, James Cagney and Alan Ladd type short. If you look real carefully he's built up in height somewhat in the scenes where Warner Brothers showed both of them in full figure and those are rare in this film.

Clark was Warner Brothers back up for John Garfield and Garfield had left Warner Brothers at this point. Clark was obviously getting the scripts that Garfield had left or maybe had turned down.

In Whiplash Clark is a struggling artist who lives in southern California and a traveling Alexis Smith likes his work and they begin a hot and heavy affair. Then she abruptly walks out and Clark is all at sea. He goes east to find her and he does and finds she's married to a wheelchair bound Zachary Scott.

Scott was once a promising fighter and if he can't be champion he wants to manage one. When Clark knocks out a middleweight contender, Scott is willing to forget the affair with Smith if he'll fight for him. And Clark proves pretty adept in the ring.

Whiplash is the kind of film that would have been far better had the all pervasive Code not been in place. What we're beating around the bush not talking about is impotence. Scott is incapable and he's a nasty creature and Alexis just isn't getting any.

The ending is straight out of one of those Thirties type boxing films and I won't elaborate. Let's just say what happened no way should have happened.

The players are fine and special mention should go to Eve Arden for simply being Eve Arden and Jeffrey Lynn for playing Smith's alcoholic doctor brother who steps up to the plate at the climax. But Whiplash would have been a better film with a more realistic script and the Code not dictating a lot of pussyfooting around some frank issues.

I couldn't get past the preposterous meet-cute opening premise: that unsuccessful artist Dane Clark was so morally outraged by the purchase of one of his paintings (his first sale!) by Alexis Smith, that he goes to her place to refund her money. I mean, what struggling painter does that? Much less enter her home unbidden to snoop around. Van Gogh lopping off an ear makes more sense.

Still, nice to see Zachary Scott doing what he does best, playing a dapper heel, albeit a slightly psychotic one with no wheelchair brakes.

Plus S. Z. Sakall, comfortably Casablanca cast as a restaurant owner. It gives you a sense of what Rick's Place must have been like after Bogie split for Brazzaville and left Carl the Waiter in charge.