Thursday, November 8, 2012

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Raymond Burr’s Tough Guy Days- “Desperate” A Film Noir Review




Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the B-film noir Desperate.

DVD Review

Desperate, starring Steve Brodie, Audrey Long, Raymond Burr, directed by Anthony Mann, RKO Radio Pictures, 1947

A guy, just an average, maybe getting a few breaks here, a few knock arounds there guy, a guy who knew a few things, knew a few guys, tough guys in the old broken down neighborhood, faded since its glory days around 1910, but kept his own nose clean. Like I said, just an average guy, an average guy who did his time overseas during the war (World War II in case anybody is asking), grabbed a few medals, saw a few things, saw a few more things that maybe he didn’t want to, or shouldn’t have seen but kept his mouth shut just like when he saw things in the old neighborhood. A guy trying to catch a break, maybe make a couple of bucks, have a couple of kids and call it a day. An ordinary average guy, got it.

Then his world caved in. Caved in big time, and not just his, but being an average guy, having done his average guy duty overseas, he came home and got married, married to a swell girl, sweet, pretty if not beautiful, and if pretty, also pretty naïve about big city ways, and tough neighborhoods, when guys keep quiet about stuff, unless and until they can square the thing themselves. And our guy, our average guy has plenty to square. Starting with, well, starting with him trying to put a couple of nickels together in the trucking industry in order to get that white picket fence and the house that comes with it in order to shelter that pretty wife and those future kids. So he takes a certain job see, a certain job that comes with some unexpected baggage, some old neighborhood baggage, from one of those wild boys who didn’t grow up to be just an average guy, but a tough guy. A tough guy who needed to move some stolen goods fast, via a truck, with no questions asked and no snitches.
Our guy, our guy to a tee. But see the thing went wrong, went wrong from the start because Mr. Tough Guy has a younger brother with the itch for the easy life. Naturally younger brother got things all balled up, got it as balled up as thing can get balled, and a cop dies. And when cops die extra heat, lots of extra heat gets turned on. So that is one problem our average guy is going to have since the cops will shoot first and sort the rest, the innocent or guilty part, later. The other problem is that our tough guy is very, very fond of that younger brother of his, a younger brother who is in the hands of the police and is set to step off , step off on the big one for that cop killing. So tough guy is ready to move might and main to get his brother free, including pointing fingers at our average guy. Our average guy, let’s face it, is nothing but a candidate for the frame anyway you cut it.

You could see with that set-up where a square average guy might get a little desperate, especially since he has no one to turn to except that pretty wife in order to make things right. So they flee, flee as far as they can to some Podunk farm where pretty wife, pregnant pretty wife as it turned out to complicate things for a guy trying to square things, grew up. Things got a little tense, a little tight for a while since our tough guy had this real thing about his brother and when that became a lost cause his tough guy thing said our average guy had to take the fall in revenge. And he did, almost, except, well except guys, even average guys, in film noirs are not stepping off for things that they didn’t do and so once again Mr. Tough Guy learns the noir lesson the hard way- crime doesn’t pay. And our average guy? Last we heard he was heading to sunny California as part of that great Okie/Arkie land giving out migration (no, not the Joad’s 1930s from hunger one, but the restless westward pioneer trek that produced those alienated hot- rodders, easy riders, and perfect wave surfers and their girls after World War II) looking for that white picket fence and the great blue-pink Western night.

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