Bodyguard

For what it is,this is a thoroughly enjoyable 40's detective flick.

Mike Carter (Tierney),gets sacked for punching his superior in an office fracas and becomes tempted into protecting a rich,meat packing business woman from some unscrupulous characters.......oh and gets framed for the murder of his previous superior in the process.

Assisting him is Doris Brewster (Lane),his girlfriend who still works in the police station he once frequented,and is able to provide Carter with valuable info from police files now out of his reach.

At a runtime of just over an hour,a movie like this needs to have a cracking pace,and this movie doesn't disappoint. It has all the action,intrigue,humour and suspense you could need,including some great one liners delivered by Tierney,all thanks to Richard Fleischer's direction.

You really cannot go wrong with this one.

A consensus seems to exist among commentators on Richard Fleischer's Bodyguard, based on a story by the young Robert Altman. The consensus is that, as it stands, it fails to satisfy; the background to this verdict is that somewhere there is – or at least was – a longer cut of the picture that probably would have been, if not a little masterpiece of film noir, a less nettlesome movie.

Feral Lawrence Tierney, a detective fired from the force for insubordination, gets offered the job of bodyguard to a old woman whose wealth comes from the meat-packing industry. At first reluctant, he accepts when shots shatter a mirror in the woman's home. Following her on a nocturnal errand, he's coshed on the head and comes to in his car parked on railway tracks; riding shotgun is the police officer who fired him, dead. Now the prime suspect, he lams up.

Assisting him in his efforts to clear himself is Priscilla Lane, his mole in police headquarters. (They devise a curious means of communication. She reads the files onto 78s and delivers them to a record store where he listens to them in a booth.) It turns out that his murdered superior investigated the death of a meat inspector at one of the plants owned by his employer....

What remains of the movie is directed with pace and even some style by Richard Fleischer (The Narrow Margin, Armored Car Robbery, The Boston Strangler; he showed a lot of sass in his early days, before he ossified into a hack.) But what we lack compromises what we have. The 13 minutes excised from the movie somewhere along the line no doubt patch up the holes in the leaky plot – like, who knew Tierney was off to the optometrist's office and set up the ambush?

A fuller version would probably make, as has been remarked, for a more grisly final confrontation, a la Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, in the meat-processing plant; in the print in common circulation, it abruptly fizzles out. Certainly, that's the lack most keenly felt. What with the meat saws whining and the meat grinders rumbling, surely Fleischer did not conclude the story with the malefactor hurling an empty pistol, bootlessly, at Tierney – to be followed, almost instantly, with Tierney and Lane leaving on their honeymoon. Somewhere out there, a few links of blood sausage are missing.

Tough-talking mug Lawrence Tierney is the hero of this quick and dirty cheapy from 1948. He plays a detective who's kicked off the force for being a hot head, and gets a job moonlighting as the bodyguard for an elderly lady (Elizabeth Risdon), matriarch and acting manager of a large and successful meat-packing company, whose life is being threatened for unknown reasons. Of course it's not long before we and Tierney realize that he's been set up to be the fall guy for a crooked plot to swindle the company away from the old lady, and he helps crack the case with the help of his girl Friday Priscilla Lane.

"Bodyguard" is almost laughingly short and inconsequential, but it's an awful lot of fun. There's nothing especially striking about the writing or visual style, but yet it doesn't feel anonymous either. There are some clever set pieces to distinguish the film, most notably a scene that takes place in an optometrist's office and that uses some clever lighting and framing. And Tierney has a cute relationship with Lane, and it's refreshing to see a woman in a film like this take an active role in solving the crime rather than simply be someone the leading man has to rescue.

Robert Altman (credited as Robert B. Altman) wrote the story for this film at the ripe old age of 25.

Far from a must see, but enjoyable if you can find it.

Grade: B-

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.

They sure don't make 'em like "Bodyguard" anymore. No. They sure don't.

This tough-as-nails, 1948, Crime/Thriller certainly packed a lot of story into its 62 minute running time.

Containing some really priceless "tough-guy" dialog, "Bodyguard" has no-nonsense actor Lawrence Tierney playing Mike Carter, a real macho-man, L.A. police detective (with a hair-trigger temper) from the Homicide Squad.

When Mike gets bounced off the force for brawling with his superior officer, who is later found dead, he becomes Suspect #1.

Scrambling to clear his name, Carter soon finds himself up against a whole big mess of police corruption.

"Bodyguard", filmed in b&w, is a solid, fast-paced, little B-movie with striking direction from Richard Fleischer.

Nope. They sure don't make 'em like this anymore.