American isolationism has rarely been so caustically handled as it is in John Sturges's muscular and magnificent Bad Day at Black Rock, an 81-minute sucker-punch of a movie that has not aged a day since its release over a half-century ago. The film, presented in a beautiful new 35 mm Scope print starting this week, was the first to confront Japanese internment and subsequent xenophobia following Pearl Harbor, and it doesn't gloss over the psychological toll of the era's ubiquitous distrust. In the town of Black Rock, not a soul wanders without the weight of post-war guilt slung over their shoulders.
Dressed in black and missing an arm from serving in Italy during the war, John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy in an Oscar-nominated performance) steps off a train in the sparsely populated town of Black Rock and is seen immediately as a threat by the nine or ten visible occupants of the town. His cordiality doesn't help things: From the moment he asks for a room to stay in and a hot shower, his every action is met with verbal hostility and imposing physicality from a couple of "cowboys" who roam the town like it's their own fiefdom. At every turn comes the same loaded question: What are you snooping around for?
That inquiry is most prominently made by Reno Smith (Ryan Reynolds), the town's de facto ruler who sets into motion a plan to murder Macreedy after the one-armed vet begins asking about the whereabouts of a Japanese-American farmer named Kamako. Smith's henchmen (Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine) are plenty good at bullying Macreedy -- Borgnine's character tries to run him off the road in a bravura chase scene through the desert -- but with the town springing leaks on Smith's history with Kamako, killing the man proves harder than expected.
Topped off by a climactic stand-off between Smith and Macreedy in the desert night, Bad Day at Black Rock, based on a smart, propulsive script by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman, precedes the epic grandeur of Sturges's The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven but it synthesizes and streamlines the explosive action sequences and steely intelligence that the director showed off in those films. Urgency and an unyielding tension are built into every single scene, and when things erupt -- as they do in a brilliantly choreographed fight scene in the town diner between Tracy and Borgnine -- the effect is exhilarating without ever being garish.
Set over a single day, Bad Day at Black Rock is a portrait of American distrust leading into the potent paranoia of the Cold War; the film was released in 1955, the same year the Warsaw Pact was signed. But it is not a hopeless vision: It is a young, guilt-ridden hotel employee that finally spills the beans to Macreedy about Smith and Kamako. Sturges got plenty of recognition for Bad Day and his subsequent triumphs but never won any awards; he was nominated for Bad Day at both the Oscars and Cannes and lost to Marty on both occasions. Revisiting the film for the umpteenth time, it's sad to report that no modern action director could go toe-to-toe with Sturges. Not even with a hand tied behind his back.
Dressed in black and missing an arm from serving in Italy during the war, John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy in an Oscar-nominated performance) steps off a train in the sparsely populated town of Black Rock and is seen immediately as a threat by the nine or ten visible occupants of the town. His cordiality doesn't help things: From the moment he asks for a room to stay in and a hot shower, his every action is met with verbal hostility and imposing physicality from a couple of "cowboys" who roam the town like it's their own fiefdom. At every turn comes the same loaded question: What are you snooping around for?
That inquiry is most prominently made by Reno Smith (Ryan Reynolds), the town's de facto ruler who sets into motion a plan to murder Macreedy after the one-armed vet begins asking about the whereabouts of a Japanese-American farmer named Kamako. Smith's henchmen (Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine) are plenty good at bullying Macreedy -- Borgnine's character tries to run him off the road in a bravura chase scene through the desert -- but with the town springing leaks on Smith's history with Kamako, killing the man proves harder than expected.
Topped off by a climactic stand-off between Smith and Macreedy in the desert night, Bad Day at Black Rock, based on a smart, propulsive script by Don McGuire and Millard Kaufman, precedes the epic grandeur of Sturges's The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven but it synthesizes and streamlines the explosive action sequences and steely intelligence that the director showed off in those films. Urgency and an unyielding tension are built into every single scene, and when things erupt -- as they do in a brilliantly choreographed fight scene in the town diner between Tracy and Borgnine -- the effect is exhilarating without ever being garish.
Set over a single day, Bad Day at Black Rock is a portrait of American distrust leading into the potent paranoia of the Cold War; the film was released in 1955, the same year the Warsaw Pact was signed. But it is not a hopeless vision: It is a young, guilt-ridden hotel employee that finally spills the beans to Macreedy about Smith and Kamako. Sturges got plenty of recognition for Bad Day and his subsequent triumphs but never won any awards; he was nominated for Bad Day at both the Oscars and Cannes and lost to Marty on both occasions. Revisiting the film for the umpteenth time, it's sad to report that no modern action director could go toe-to-toe with Sturges. Not even with a hand tied behind his back.
