Movie Review: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Genre: Crime Drama

Director: Robert Wise

Starring: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, Shelley Winters, Gloria Grahame

Running Time: 95 minutes

Synopsis: Disgraced ex-cop Burke (Ed Begley) recruits ex-con Slater (Robert Ryan) and indebted gambling addict Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) for a bank robbery job. Slater is unhappily attached to Lorry (Shirley Winters) and eyeing neighbour Helen (Gloria Grahame). Johnny is under pressure to repay his debts while trying to be a father to a young daughter and attempting to win back ex-wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton). Slater is a racist and resents partnering with the black Johnny for the robbery, but desperation forces them together.

What Works Well: A commitment to deep character focus results in an engrossing human-centred crime drama. Director Robert Wise and writer Abraham Polonsky (blacklisted at the time) adapt the William P. McGivern novel with emphasis on emotional despair and inner demons driving men to crime. Johnny is a flawed but sympathetic nightclub performer trying to be a family man, but even the more despicable Slater is rounded into a full-fledged person, thanks to a lived-in Robert Ryan performance. Wise uses close quarters and close-ups to convey hardship, complemented by exceptionally crisp cinematography (courtesy of Joseph C. Brun) and an evocative John Lewis jazz score.

What Does Not Work As Well: The wait for the actual heist is quite long, and once it arrives, it's a slipshod mess of non-planning and animosity.

Conclusion: A portrait of the men behind the crimes that rarely pay.



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Movie Review: Patterns (1956)

A corporate boardroom drama, Patterns (also known as Patterns Of Power) reveals ruthless dynamics among men at capitalism's highest echelons.

Engineer Fred Staples (Van Heflin) and his wife Nancy (Beatrice Straight) relocate from Ohio to Manhattan, where Fred is joining the executive team at the massive Ramsey & Co industrial conglomerate. The firm is run with an iron fist by Walter Ramsey (Everett Sloane), and he sees Fred as a replacement for William Briggs (Ed Begley), a senior executive with 40 years of experience, but now in failing health.

Ramsey no longer trusts Briggs' judgment, and does all he can to humiliate him into resigning. Staples is caught between the two men. He admires Briggs' common touch and concern for workers, but is also ambitious. A showdown looms when Ramsey refuses to acknowledge Briggs' contributions to an important report.

Staples: I just hope Mr. Ramsey remembers hiring me.
Briggs: Mr. Ramsey rarely forgets anything.

A cinematic adaptation of a teleplay written by Rod Serling, Patterns infiltrates the penthouse level of a New York highrise to uncover the jungle rules of corporate backstabbing and ladder climbing. Clocking in at an efficient 84 minutes, director Fielder Cook keeps the drama at the theatrical scale of intimacy, but allows his cameras to roam among several locations, including the Staples home, the building lobby, and most impressively, the lavish hallway connecting the senior executive offices, where secretaries with their own hierarchy dutifully follow orders.

Within the short running time, Serling focuses on one net zero theme - Briggs' downfall coinciding with Staples' rise - and is quick to resort to plenty of agitated arguments, escalating into some tedious shouting matches. And for a smart man, Staples is often slow to read the room and discern his trajectory.

Ramsey: Name your terms. All terms are negotiable.

But the background contexts are still impactful. Briggs laments the loss of an era when bosses knew their workers by name, and growth came from productivity and innovation rather than acquiring bankrupt companies. Staples starts to understand why he was hand-picked by Ramsey, and what it takes to be a leader at a mammoth corporation.

The three leads rise to the challenge in dominant performances. Everett Sloane shines in conveying an unshakeable belief that Ramsey is the smartest man in the room, berating others to catch up. Ed Begley embodies Briggs' final stand, and Van Heflin straddles the middle, the drama seen through his eyes. Beatrice Straight as Nancy reveals the depth of Serling's writing, her character demonstrating calm agility at moments of highest stress.

Staples: I don't want the job. I'm through, I'm quitting, I resign as of now.
Ramsey: Why?
Staples: Because I hate your guts. You used Bill Briggs for a whipping boy. You made him knuckle under, then you beat him to death. You wouldn't try anything like that with me because I'd kill you first.
Ramsey: I'm not a nice human being. What else?

Offering no easy answers but plenty of brutal reality checks, Patterns merges dark and light into a cross-cutting perspective.

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Movie Review: Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

The third film in a series adapting author Len Deighton's Harry Palmer spy adventures to the screen, Billion Dollar Brain steers towards buffoonish satire and crashes into a miserable failure.

In London, Palmer (Michael Caine) has left MI5 and is working as a private investigator. He refuses overtures by his former boss Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) to return to the service, instead accepting a computer-issued assignment to deliver a package to Helsinki. There he meets Anya (Françoise Dorléac) and her partner Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden), who are involved in a plot financed by Texas megalomaniac General Midwinter (Ed Begley) to fight communism with the help of computer analytics.

Deploying strong arm tactics, Ross does succeed in convincing Palmer to rejoin MI5. Palmer makes his way to Latvia's capital Riga and gets reacquainted with his jovial Soviet foe Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka). Palmer uncovers Midwinter's plan to force the Soviets out of Latvia, and realizes Leo has his own agenda to make a lot of money on the side. 

Combining controversial director Ken Russell with a spy milieu in frigid surroundings was always going to be a risk, and sure enough, it just does not work. Producer Harry Saltzman ends up with a mess on his hands, Billion Dollar Brain falling into a wide gap between muddled espionage, failed satire, and low-brow humour.

The opening act quickly loses balance, Palmer poking his business into a murky plot, allowing himself to be led by the nose first by Anya, then Leo, and finally Ross. The action goes completely off the rails with the introduction of nut case General Midwinter, Ed Begley not just chewing the scenery but also vomiting on it with no hint of control. By this point Oskar Homolka's Colonel Stok is undressing in Palmer's hotel room and exiting through the balcony in search of cheap laughs. The plot finally consumes itself in the idiocy of Midwinter leading an army - assembled out of nowhere and packed into tanker trucks - in an absurd attempt to liberate Latvia.

As Stok, Leo, and Midwinter form of a trio of lunatics commanding the asylum, Palmer is mostly an observer and doofus victim primarily concerned with seducing Anya. Russell wastes scenic Nordic and Eastern European surroundings with his uncoordinated antics, and the main point of interest defaults to glossy scenes of large computer rooms representing the era's state of the science. But even the imbecilic title premise of a computer issuing orders and plotting wars is undermined by the ease with which Leo reprograms the machine to suit his purpose. As it turns out, a billion dollars does not buy much of a brain.

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