Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

gavin6942 When his car breaks down during a trip from Los Angeles to Texas, John Emmett (Sterling Hayden) meets another motorist, Ann Nicholson (Ruth Roman), who offers him a lift. He learns that she is running away from her physician, Dr. Simmons (Werner Klemperer), and the police, who want to question her about a murdered Central Intelligence Agent in Los Angeles.Werner Klemperer? The CIA? Murder? Oh yes. While this is not one of those big budget thrillers or spy stories, it is not a bad one. You like independent film, do you not? Well, this is what it looked like in the 1950s, when you worked outside the studio system.

albertayler1 Let's get this out of the way. IMDb and the film itself do not credit a young Jack Elam as the thug Harry, who fails to do away with the principal characters. One of the spies later refers to him as "Harry". Elam looks almost ruggedly handsome here, not the messy, bugeyed, snaggletoothed psychotic he often portrayed in later years.The real problem with this noirish road film is that the script is severely weakened from the plot and dialog of the novel "The Steel Mirror" by Donald Hamilton. The original novel had a very intricate plot that included psychological amnesia, guilt as a result of betrayal of resistance fighters in France in World WAr II, more fleshed out characters and motivations, etc. Kessler, the producer, director, and screenwriter failed to make anything of his material leaving the actors trying to salvage a dull script. Had this film been done by one of the noir specialists of the 40s it probably would have been a different film. If you can hunt down Hamilton's original version it is a fine read. I salute Sterling Hayden, Ruth Roman, and Werner Klemperer for their efforts.

stills-6 Poorly directed, poorly staged, and veers into propagandist self-parody, it nevertheless works because of the two leads. Sterling Hayden is fantastic as the everyman drifter, and manages to make the occasionally ham-handed script sound authentic. This is a kind of American-character type study that sets the American everyman as more of a puzzle-solver than an ass-kicker, though both are in evidence. Ruth Roman is somewhat off-putting and passionless, but it's the kind of performance that keeps you guessing and makes you wonder about her. Whether or not that was intentional is debatable. Their relationship is also off-putting, but has a strange resonance, if only because of Hayden's droopy-lipped deadpan.The somewhat stiff supporting cast, except maybe for Cooper, gives the impression that this is army-issue "What To Do" type stuff for a Cold War audience. And I'm sure there was some of that kind of thinking behind it. The all-seeing Deus-Ex-Machina of the espionage machine is very heavy.I wonder about people who think that the absence of suspense in a movie like this is a weakness. I suppose if you were expecting thrilling suspense or some kind of a mindless noir-caper style of movie you would be sorely disappointed. The at-times blocky and then wildly uncontrolled staging make it very difficult to sustain a consistent tone, and the director doesn't appear to want to pay attention to any kind of thematic imagery. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this makes the threat posed by the story seem more artlessly plausible, and the tension created revolves around psychological issues rather than mortal ones. If any attention had been paid to the implications of this idea, it might be a better movie. As it is, it's mostly entertaining and highly watchable.

dbdumonteil Do you remember "the thirty-nine steps"?Do you remember Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll chained together by handcuffs ?Sterling Hayden and Ruth Roman (who was in Hitchcock's "strangers on a train") have the same misadventure;besides,the doctor and the nurse who "take care" of Mrs Nicholson recall Claude Rains and his mother poisoning Ingrid Bergman in "notorious".It goes without saying that "5 paces to danger" is Hitchcockesque to the core.The plot is bizarre but the two leads make a good pairing and the film ,which begins as a road movie ,then features an almost irrelevant flashback in Germany to continue as a spy thriller ,is rather entertaining.Best scene comes at the end when they visit the so called Kessel in the base: we feel something odd in the air and the bag is a good trick.