Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

JohnHowardReid Elia Kazan declined to discuss his Fox films when I interviewed him. He felt they were not his. They were not Gadge Kazan movies but the result of a team effort by such superb studio craftsmen as photographer Norbert Brodine and film editor Harmon Jones. True, Kazan directed the cast, but this movie's visual style, pacing and atmosphere was supervised by de Rochemont who had the ear of studio head, Darryl F. Zanuck.However, despite Kazan's initial reluctance to talk about Boomerang!, we actually spent well over thirty minutes on it. While he agreed that the picture was realistic at a time when Hollywood was mainly into glamour and escapism, Kazan argued the movie "was no way as good as Paisa." Kazan was also contemptuous of the over-simplification of civic corruption in Fulton Oursler's Reader's Digest article on which the film was based. And he was not happy with his leading man, Dana Andrews, whom he described as difficult to direct. He didn't like the way Brodine lit the film either and found him extremely unreceptive to suggestions that he employ a more gritty style such as that used by Martelli in Paisa.

seanparker1942 This is a top-notch Film Noir with some excellent acting all round. It is also helped by a terrific true story line where an accused man is exonerated. And another twist to the story is that the prosecutor assigned to send him to his death is the one who ultimately gets him off. This would not have happened if the local community and its politicians had heir way. As an aside, when Arthur Kennedy is first arrested and is in the police station an officer walks across and places a hand on his shoulder, the man looks like Eli Wallach but there is nothing on his profile to say that it was him Also, he is not mentioned in the cast list for Boomerang. Has anybody else noticed him?

James Hitchcock The title of this film is a bit of a mystery. There is no connection with Australia, and boomerangs are never seen, or even mentioned, during the film.In 1924 a priest named Hubert Dahme was shot dead on the streets of Bridgeport, Connecticut. There were no obvious suspects and no obvious motive for the crime; Father Dahme was a popular man with no known enemies. Eventually a vagrant named Harold Israel was arrested and charged with the murder. At first the case against Israel seemed a strong one, but he was eventually cleared through the efforts of a determined lawyer. Surprisingly, this was not his own defence counsel but the man tasked with prosecuting him, the Connecticut state's attorney, Homer Cummings, who later became United States Attorney- General under the Roosevelt administration. Cummings became convinced that the police evidence was unsatisfactory and persuaded the Court to discount it. Israel was acquitted; the true murderer was never found.The film is a fictionalised version of this true-life murder case. The action is updated from the twenties to the forties. Names are changed; the murdered priest becomes "Father George Lambert", the accused man "John Waldron" and the state's attorney "Henry Harvey". The local authorities in Bridgeport, who may still have had a guilty conscience about the way Israel had been treated, refused permission to film there, so the film was actually shot in neighbouring Stamford. As in the real- life case the crime is never officially solved, although the film strongly implies who the real killer is. "Boomerang!" has a lot in common with the James Stewart film "Call Northside 777", another crime drama from the following year. Both films are based on a true story from the twenties or thirties, and both deal with a fight to clear men wrongly accused of murder. In "Call Northside 777" the two men have already been convicted and are serving a sentence in jail; here the defendant is on trial for his life. Both are made in a semi-documentary style, a mixture of documentary realism and film noir, and make use of voice-over. One actor, Lee J. Cobb, appears in both films. There is more to the film, however, than a documentary reconstruction of real-life events. There is also a strong political element. Political control of the town in which the action takes place has recently switched to a vigorous reforming administration, here referred to as the "Reform Party". After Father Lambert is killed, however, this new administration comes under attack from both press and public for the alleged incompetence of the police in failing to find the murderer. Harvey, therefore, comes under a lot of pressure from his political bosses who have a vested interest in ensuring that Waldron is convicted, and his reluctance to press the case is misinterpreted as stemming from support for the opposition faction in the town, who have an equally strong vested interest in ensuring that Waldron is acquitted. Those pressurising Harvey do so from a mixture of motives. At one end of the scale is the relatively decent Police Chief Harold Robinson (Cobb's character), who sincerely believes Waldron to be guilty. At the other end is Paul Harris, an obviously corrupt local councillor who does not care one way or the other about justice, but is desperate to see Waldron convicted because he fears than one of his corrupt schemes will miscarry should he be voted off the Town Council.I was interested in the film because it highlights obvious differences between the British and American (or at least Connecticut) justice systems. A prosecuting barrister in Britain could not drop a prosecution without the consent of those instructing him, generally the police or Crown Prosecution Service. Harvey, however, clearly has much more extensive powers, and mindful of the American lawyers' Code of Ethics, which stipulates that a prosecutor's main duty is not to obtain a conviction but to see that justice is done, he begins to subject the police evidence to independent scrutiny. One by one the key planks of the police case, which originally seems a solid one, begin to crumble. Waldron's confession is shown to have been obtained by oppression. Several eye-witnesses are shown to have been unclear or mistaken about what they saw; the one whose testimony seems firm is revealed to be an embittered ex-girlfriend with a grudge against Waldron. The ballistics evidence which seemed to show that the fatal bullet was fired from Waldron's gun proves to be unreliable.Dana Andrews was not always my favourite actor, especially when he ended up in substandard war dramas like "North Star" or "The Purple Heart", but he is good here as Harvey, an earlier version of Atticus Finch, a man who believes that lawyers must have a conscience and act with integrity, no matter what side of the law they may be on. He receives good support from Cobb as Robinson, a decent but limited man who cannot conceive that supposedly firm evidence can turn out to be flawed, and from Arthur Kennedy as Waldron, who shows that innocent men are not always nice ones, and unsympathetic men not always guilty. "Boomerang!" not just a documentary; it is also a solidly-crafted legal drama with a griping courtroom climax. 7/10

vincentlynch-moonoi This is a very powerful film. Dana Andrews is at his best here, and I always thought it sad that despite some very good movie roles that he never made it to the upper echelon of acting. Perhaps that was due to his alcoholism.As is made evident in the film, it is based on a true story from 1924 Connecticut, when a priest, walking along a street at night, is shot in the head. A vagrant and discharged soldier with emotional problems in indicted for the murder, but only after the case lags and the local government is skewered by the press and the citizenry. So once a suspect is found and arrested, there is a rush to judgment. However, the local district attorney -- and later Attorney General of the U.S. under FDR -- doesn't believe the man in guilty. Through an interesting courtroom segment, the man is found not guilty.Elia Kazan does a bang-up job directing here, but, unfortunately, with the film being shot on location (although in a different community from where the events actually took place), production values are not high. It's interesting to see the lovely Jane Wyatt, although her part is of passing interest (as Andrews wife). Lee J. Cobb (as a detective) and Arthur Kennedy (as the suspect) are never favorites of mine, but both turn in very good performances here, as due Karl Malden (another police officer) and Ed Begley (as a shady local politician).If I were into crime dramas more, this would probably find a place on my DVD shelf, but I'll settle for occasionally watching it on TCM. And, make no mistake, this one is definitely worth watching.