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"Tight Spot" is a crime drama about the events that take place during the period in which a district attorney tries to persuade a female convict to testify against a ruthless gangster in a deportation case. The woman's life is constantly under threat and the attorney is desperate or her to co-operate because, if she doesn't, he knows he won't be able to do anything else to curtail the activities of the notorious mobster.
Lloyd Hallett (Edward G Robinson) is the D.A. who arranges for Sherry Conley (Ginger Rogers) to be removed from prison and transferred to a heavily guarded hotel room where Detective Lieutenant Vince Striker (Brian Keith) takes charge of ensuring that she remains alive long enough to be able to testify in the case against Ben Costain (Lorne Greene).
Sherry had been on Costain's yacht with her friend Pete Tonelli (Alfred Linder) somewhere in the West Indies when another foreign gangster that Costain had illegally brought into the U.S. was also on board. Costain had been very smart in ensuring that he couldn't be directly linked to any of his various crimes and so the opportunity to get him deported for breaching the terms under which he was allowed into the country, was the best option open to Hallett. Sherry, however, isn't open to persuasion and her decision not to cooperate is reinforced when she learns that Tonelli had been gunned down by Costain's men after he'd agreed to testify.
During her time in the hotel room, Sherry survives a couple of attempts on her life and also enjoys ordering expensive food as well as flirting with Striker who's also attracted to her. The extremely determined Lloyd Hallett attempts to get Sherry to change her mind by conscripting the assistance of her sister but this approach also fails badly. Will the offer of having her sentence commuted finally be enough to induce Sherry to testify or will some other development be critical in enabling Hallett to achieve his objective?
"Tight Spot" was based on the play "Dead Pigeon" by Leonard Kantor and looks stagy as most of the action takes place in one location (the hotel room). The advantage of this type of presentation, however, is that it emphasises very naturally, how trapped Sherry remains even when she's out of prison and makes her situation seem even more dangerous because she can neither avoid the attentions of those who want to kill her or escape from her surrogate prison cell.
The best feature of this movie is the quality of its cast who through their performances elevate a rather ordinary story into something more entertaining than it would otherwise have been. Ginger Rogers is very brash and loud-mouthed as the ex-model and gangster's moll who fell foul of the law through being a "chump" and Edward G Robinson has a great on-screen presence. Lorne Greene looks very imposing and dynamic in his role and Brian Keith does a great job as Striker, who is cynical, corrupt and conflicted and eminently more interesting than any of the other characters. When he starts to unravel, the torment that he goes through is palpable.
Although it's not one of the best movies of its kind, "Tight Spot" is still very enjoyable, primarily because of its talented cast.
score 7/10
seymourblack-1 23 September 2014
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3091309/ |
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23-2-2021 18:10:05