Mjeteconer
Just perfect...
Keira Brennan
The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
Kimball
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
Kirpianuscus
it is difficult to say why. but see it !for the cast, for the story, for dialogues, tension, characters and, of course, for Rita Hayworth. and her dance . but, maybe, for the high chemistry between her and Robert Mitchum. and for the work of Jack Lemmon. sure, it reminds many films from the same period, with the same theme and dispute nature and end. but using the same recipes, "Fire Down Below" remains special. maybe, because it is a film of its actors and not exactly pretext for fireworks. because the performances are different by others from the same actors. because Rita Hayworth is the same but she tries, and she did a good job, to give to her character the mark of a period and context and signs of a type who is not exactly reduced at stereotypes. so, see it ! not only for the status of old film.
digimurph
A feckless Tony (Jack Lemmon) comes off as deluded and pathetic by falling for the faithless Irena (Rita Hayworth) character, maybe only realizing at the end what a favor his long time friend and partner Felix (Robert Mitchum) does by keeping them apart.Lemmon plays his typical 'good guy not seeing the bad around him' character, yet without the upbeat success in the end. He seems to be always falling on his face in this movie.When he falls for Rita Hayworth, she is looking to 'better deal' him from the beginning with her interest in the cynical hardened Robert Mitchum. Mitchum, seeing her for what she is, wisely moves on.When Felix leaves and Tony remains by Irena, she attaches to him only until Felix's return, acting the girlfriend out of convenience. She then promptly flips, rejecting Tony, who had just risked his life to return to her, while Felix risks his to save Tony!If there is any character study here it is in how Robert Mitchum, who sees Irena for the 'user' she is, does everything from trying to get them jailed to accepting her 'profession of love' in the end and keeping her from making Tony her next victim.In the end, Tony still wants revenge, even after Felix saves his life. It is only when Irena shows her true colors that he backs down, not fully appreciating all his friend has done for him.
ianlouisiana
Johnny Mercer knew a thing or two about women like Irena(Miss R.Hayworth battered but unbowed as a refugee from just about everything) wearily passing from man to man before she ends up on a ratty boat owned by Mr R.Mitchum and Mr J.Lemmon en route to anywhere as long as she hasn't been there before. Without really trying she causes a violent fight between the two men and Lemmon is only saved by a timely intervention by the splendid Mr E.Connor as their deckhand. Put ashore she allows Lemmon to accompany her to a run - down hotel and hatch a plot to smuggle her back to the USA which is foiled when Mitchum betrays him to the Customs.Miss Hayworth and Mr Mitchum clearly deserve each other and become lovers.Forced to sign on as crew in a decrepit freighter,Lemmon is trapped by the legs in a collision at sea and can only be saved if he allows the doctor(Mr B.Lee in what may be his finest screen performance)to amputate.You may extrapolate the rest with little difficulty,but much of the joy in "Fire down below" is in the casting of the smaller parts with Mr A.Newley exceptional as a barman/fixer who initially gets the three main characters together and a customarily wry turn from Mr H.Lom as the Harbourmaster who must make the decision to tow the damaged freighter out to sea to avoid an explosion which would devastate the waterfront and undoubtedly cost him his job and at the same time abandon Mr Lemmon to his fate which also would undoubtedly cost him his job. I first saw the film in 1958 at the "Savoy" on Brighton seafront in a more innocent world where it was o.k. to like Americans and view them as the potential saviours of western civilisation rather than the precursors of its doom,o.k. to see the U.S. Navy as an honourable,brave and helpful organisation run by nice guys like Mr B.Colleano despite being Canadian. Now of course those naive beliefs are no longer self - evident although I still grimly cling to them along with the hope that,out there somewhere Mitchum,Lemmon and Hayworth are living in a "Jules et Jim" menage a trois happily ever after. Well,I never said I was smart.
James Hitchcock
Two American sailors, Felix and Tony, are co-owners of a tramp boat which they use for small-scale smuggling around the Caribbean. One day, however, they receive a more lucrative proposition. They are offered $1000 to transport Irena, a beautiful but stateless Eastern European refugee, from one island to another. As normally happens in films like this, both men fall in love with her, and they come to blows, their friendship forgotten.The two men are quite different in character. Tony, a bachelor, is a romantic and idealistic young man who has come to care deeply for Irena. Felix is a divorcée, several years older than Tony; the failure of his brief marriage has left him a hard-bitten and cynical misogynist. He also has a nasty streak in him, shown when, under a pretence of friendship, he tells Tony to beware of Irena who is a woman of immoral character. His real motive, of course, is to leave Irena free for himself. When this ploy fails, he tips off the coastguard about Tony's smuggling activities.The first part of the film is dominated by the Tony/Felix/Irena love triangle, but about halfway through Felix and Irena suddenly disappear from the action and the film abruptly changes from a romantic melodrama to a disaster movie, a sort of poor man's "Poseidon Adventure". Tony has signed as a crewman on board a Greek freighter and is injured when it is involved in a collision with a liner. Tony's injuries are in themselves relatively minor, certainly not life-threatening, but he is nevertheless in grave danger as he is trapped by a fallen iron girder and the ship is on fire. To make things worse, it is carrying a potentially explosive cargo.This was Rita Hayworth's first film after a four-year absence from the screen, caused by events in her private life. Rita remained a major sex symbol for over two decades because she was able to change her style of beauty as she got older. In early films such as "You'll Never Get Rich" she was an innocent, girl-next-door type. In what might be called her "middle period", the period of "Gilda" or "The Lady from Shanghai" she was a seductive femme fatale. Here, at the age of 39, she plays a glamorous, sophisticated older woman, and still looks as attractive as ever, especially in a swimsuit.This is, moreover, a very accomplished acting performance. Irena seems to have had a somewhat shady past, the full details of which are never made clear in the film, but one does not sense from Rita's interpretation that she is as immoral as Felix makes out. There is a sense that Irena has had a difficult life in Europe and that she has known sadness, perhaps even tragedy. She is reserved on the surface but one senses strong feelings beneath. (This is one of two meanings of the title "Fire down Below", the other referring to the literal fire which has broken out on the ship).Jack Lemmon as Tony plays his part reasonably well, but this is not a particularly good film. There are several reasons for this. The race against time to free Tony from the burning ship does not generate as much tension as one might have expected. The two halves of the film do not fit together well, and the change from one to the other is too abrupt. Irena and Felix reappear towards the end, but only Robert Mitchum has much to do; Rita's participation is effectively over by half-time.Felix is a key character, but Mitchum hesitates between two possible interpretations of the role. He seems unsure whether Felix is basically a decent but flawed individual or basically a nasty piece of work who redeems himself by one act of selfless bravery. He attempts both interpretations in the course of the film, and ends up making neither convincing. The film-makers were obviously guided by the normal convention that in any film involving a love-triangle it will be the first name above the title who gets the girl. (Lemmon was later to become one of Hollywood's biggest names, but in 1957 it was Mitchum who got first billing). The ending, in which Irena ends up with Felix rather than Tony, struck me as psychologically implausible and dramatically false. A marriage between Irena and Tony might have had some chance of working; one between her and Felix would serve no purpose except to provide employment for the divorce lawyers. Despite its three major-league stars, "Fire Down Below" is no more than a minor-league melodrama. 5/10
