|
|
TIGHT SPOT features an A-list cast, however none were A-list at the time, with Brian Keith about to rise to solid star status while Ginger Rogers and Edward G. Robinson were on the downhill side of heights that Keith would never approach. Which is not to say that anyone's abilities had seriously flagged. TIGHT SPOT remains a B-picture, but the performances elevate it to a strong 'B', and that's a lot better than some dreary high budget production. Is it a noir? Columbia likes to think so, and the Brian Keith character makes this a reasonable claim, but the movie centers around Ginger Rogers' Sheri Conley, and Sheri isn't a femme fatale, not by a long shot.
Ginger's performance is rather controversial. Sheri is an over-the-hill model who appears to have taken as her own role models the kinds of brassy dames common in the films of her adolescence and played by actresses such as Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell and...well, Ginger Rogers. It would be a natural thing for someone like Sheri to do, and it must be said that director Phil Karlson must have agreed with Rogers in this interpretation even if it didn't exactly fit into the typical noir milieu (near the end of her film career, Rogers certainly didn't have the power to overrule her directors in such matters of interpretation). She'd played a character in a similar situation in a polar opposite fashion in STORM WARNING only a few years earlier, tight and withdrawn rather than outgoing and wordy as here. I'll go so far as to say that you'll like TIGHT SPOT to the degree that you like Ginger's interpretation of her role. In any event, she provides energy to a film otherwise lacking in it.
Edward G. Robinson was one of the finest actors that the screen has ever seen, and he's letter perfect here even if he's somewhat wasted. Brian Keith is as solid as always, as is the rest of the cast, with special kudos for Lorne Greene in a small role as the heavy. Phil Karlson was generally a better director than his material (KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL being his one real masterpiece), but he seems caught between a rock and a hard place here, either dissipating the claustrophobic atmosphere by opening it up too much or staying in that hotel room until tedium ensued (many scenes undeniably go on too long, with way too many words).
TIGHT SPOT is a decent film, and with two of the genuine greats of cinematic history in its cast, it's one that shouldn't be missed.
score 8/10
vert001 20 October 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3565653/ |
|
23-2-2021 18:10:05