NIGHT PASSAGE (1957)

As much as I enjoy Jimmy Stewart, Dan Duryea and Audie Murphy, I can see why Anthony Mann turned this movie down: the script is way more complicated than it needs to be and there's no tension. Instead of being concerned about what happened to who I spent most of my time scratching my head in confusion. From what I gathered Stewart used to work for the railroad as a bounty hunter or something. Anyway, he let a guy (Audie Murphy) escape once and they fired him. Jump back to the present day and the railroad secretly hires Stewart back to deliver $10,000 to a work camp. As luck would have it Audie Murphy and his gang rob the train, but they can't find the money since Stewart hid it on a kid. Other stuff happens including people riding horses and shooting guns, but it's just a mess. Not a disaster, just a ham-handed mess.

All three of the leads are fine, but the direction by James Neilson is dead on arrival. Also a number of the scenes are obviously shot on a sound stage, which I found very distracting. Not really worth watching.

Interesting fact: According to IMDb Jimmy Stewart was so upset with Anthony Mann for refusing to direct the movie he never spoke to him ever again!

Notice Jack Elam on the right?

CRISS CROSS (1949)

"I wish we'd never met."

Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo have been in a troubled on-again-off-again relationship for years. At one point they were even married!  The marriage only lasted for a few months though before they busted up and Burt hit the road (for over a year) in hopes of getting her out of his system.  It didn't work, cause now he's back and immediately looking for her.  Well, he finds her and quickly discovers that she's now the main squeeze of a local gangster (Dan Duryea), but that's not gonna slow him down though. Ohhh no, not this idiot.  He's head over heels for this chick, no matter how bad is gets.  He even goes so far as to agree to be the inside man on an armored car heist!!! Holy fook!

CRISS CROSS is a highly entertaining film packed into a tight 87 minutes and it has a lot of things going for it.  Most notably Burt Lancaster, director Robert Siodmak, a pre-"Munsters" Yvonne De Carlo, an uncredited appearance by a young Tony Curtis and nice photography by Franz Planer.

If you're into film noir, then I say check it out. I think you'll enjoy it.

THUNDER BAY (1953)

Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart followed up their collaboration on the excellent THE NAKED SPUR with THUNDER BAY. Stewart is a hardworking man determined to find oil in the Gulf no matter what, even if it fucking kills him! His financial backer (Jay C. Flippen) is just as determined and has invested all of his money into this project. If it fails they're fooked, but things aren't just as easy as setting up a rig and pumping the oil out. No siree Bob, the local shrimp fishermen believe the oilers are gonna kill all of the shrimp, so they'll stop at nothing to get these assholes out of here...even if they have to blow up the entire oil rig!

On a technical level, the film is fine and looks great. Also the acting is good, especially Stewart who carries the entire thing with his portrayal of a man-possessed. The thing that pulls the movie down is the script. It's passable, but I wish that it had been grittier and never included the second romantic subplot between Stewart and Joanne Dru. The Dan Duryea / Marcia Henderson romance actually added to the film, but the Stewart / Dru one made no sense and it was a distraction from the exciting oil drilling story. And speaking of oil drilling, I wish there had been a little introduction to off shore drilling earlier on in the film (maybe in a meeting with the towns folk). I don't know shit about off shore drilling, so when they started yelling about air pockets and water spurting up through the hole I had no fucking clue what was going one except that it seemed pretty important.

Overall, an entertaining picture, but it's pretty dated, simplified and overly melodramatic. A must-watch for Stewart fans though.