Slim-4

This is a beautiful film that offers much more than the usual sports action. It tells the story of a tiny Indiana high school whose basketball team soars to great heights in the Indiana State High School Basketball Tournament.

Gene Hackman plays a coach with a checkered past. Ultimately, we find out about his past. Dennis Hopper, an avid basketball fan and the local drunk knows but doesn't tell. Barbara Hershey finds out and the story is revealed in the stubble of a cornfield as they talk.

Hershey plays a local girl who has come back to teach school after going away to college. "Why'd you come back to Hickory?", Hackman asks her in one scene. She doesn't tell him. I wish she had. Her character is very enigmatic and is perhaps the most interesting in the movie. The character has unusual depth. She is a substitute mom for a local basketball star. She wants him to focus on his studies and to get away from Hickory and basketball. She doesn't understand the importance of basketball to everyone around her. It appears that she may even resent the importance that her parents' placed on her brother's basketball experiences. Resentful or not, she too attends the games to cheer the team on. Her enthusiasm for the game and the team is more muted than most, however. There is a deep ambivalence in her character.

Dennis Hopper delivers a terrific performance as Shooter, the former high school basketball turned drunk. In one scene where he is describing an upcoming opponent to Hackman he is almost poetic. Hackman offers him a chance for redemption when his assistant coach (Sheb Wooley) becomes ill. The film offers us an opportunity to cheer for Shooter's redemption as well as the team. Hopper plays the role with sincerity, humor and emotion. There is a touching scene late in the film in which he and his son interact before the big game. Shooter who is now in the hospital must listen on the radio, but the film doesn't forget him.

I particularly enjoyed the visual aspects of this film. The film's opening scenes of Hackman driving through the rural Indiana countryside are some of the most beautiful images ever put on film. In one scene he stops at an intersection on a narrow road. There is a prettly little white church and a lot of corn. Otherwise, there is nothing. He passes a barn where some boys are playing basketball against a makeshift basket and backboard. This establishes at the beginning the importance of basketball in Indiana. Throughout the film there are beautiful scenes that showcase the Indiana countryside. The film deserves credit for showing Indiana's beauty against the backdrop of Winter.

The film found an beautiful old elementary school at Ninevah, Indiana to serve as the exterior for the Hickory High School. The school was closed several years ago because of asbestos contamination. The last time I saw it it was a wreck. The windows were broken and the building was surrounded by broken bricks and glass. I almost cried.

There is an intimacy in the basketball scenes that is missing from most sports movies. The gym at Hickory reminds me of my old home town at Winlock, Washington. The gym at Hickory, like the one at Winlock, has a dim, boxlike quality which roars to life on game night. In the final scenes the game loses this intimacy as the team goes to Indianapolis for the finals. Hackman realizes this and tries to help his team realize it's just another gym. He has them measure the distance from the foul line to the basket and the height of the rim. "Same as at Hickory", he says.

I also enjoyed Jerry Goldsmith's musical score for this film. There are beautiful cues to help us appreciate the beauty of rural Indiana. There are also pulsating themes underscore the sometimes tense basketball.

This is a great film which can be enjoyed on several levels. It has great characters, a wonderful script and awesome visual values. I watch it over and over again and have never tired of it.

This film has the feel of a documentary as sailor Richard Widmark frets at his role at a remote weather station in the Gobi Desert and yearns to get a ship under him again. Ultimately, he returns to the sea in an unexpected fashion.

The relationship between the sailors and the nomadic Mongols is a crucial part of the film. The nomads are credibly portrayed as human beings who are neither all good or all bad. The film gets high marks for its portrayal of the Mongol culture. It would have been so easy for the film to show people who looked like the Native American Indians Hollywood films are so comfortable with. The Mongol yurts have a realistic look and the film truly succeeds here in portraying a different and likeable culture.

There is little action in this film, but that's really not a problem. The unusual and probably unique story line more than makes up for it. The ending is a little hard to believe, but remember that anything is possible in films. Enjoy it.

This is one of the few films where the story plays out in real time. Star Gary Cooper has about 80 minutes before the Noon train brings a bad guy to town for a showdown and that's how long it takes. The train arrives on time and the shootout occurs on schedule.

It is the clock that makes this suspenseful Western work. Director Fred Zinnemann makes sure that the camera focuses often on the clock. As the time nears high noon the clock becomes noticeably bigger until the end the pendulum practically fills the screen. Don't bother with this movie on commercial television. Commercial breaks absolutely destroy the timing which drives this film.

The cast does an excellent job with the great script. Gary Cooper plays one of his best roles as the sheriff and Grace Kelly is very good as his Quaker wife who doesn't quite understand the need for violence. They are backed up well by Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado and Lon Chaney. Jack Elam has a good comic moment as a drunk sleeping it off in jail. Lee Van Cleef has a key role as one of the villains. He is the first of the four gunmen that the viewer sees, appearing in the opening credits. Incredibly, he gets through the entire film without uttering one word of dialogue.

The movie is loosely based on a story entitled "The Tin Star". The film has no connection to the movie of that name. The movie entitled "The Tin Star" ultimately honors the badge. In "High Noon" the sheriff finds that the badge carries little honor when the town doesn't support law and order. The townspeople are too eager to sacrifice Cooper to save the good name of the town. Much of the film follows Cooper as he tries to recruit help. He can't find any and perhaps he shouldn't have expected any. In "Rio Bravo" sheriff John Wayne turns down help from his old friend Ward Bond. "You're not good enough", he tells his friend. One of the great moments in "High Noon" is when Cooper realizes he will have to face the four baddies alone. He lays his head down on the desk and cries. It's a touching and credible moment in this great film.

The other element that makes this film work is the music. Dimitri Tiomkin's pulsating score repeats the title song "Do Not Forsake Me" over and over. This has the effect of increasing the tension and pacing the film. In the opening credits Tex Ritter sings Ned Washington's lyrics. The song won the Academy Award and helped the movie succeed at the box office when Frankie Laine--not Tex Ritter--made the song a hit.