Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Sexylocher Masterful Movie

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

HotToastyRag If you like Jack Lemmon, Rita Hayworth, and Robert Mitchum, you'll be tempted to rent Fire Down Below, a love triangle set in the Caribbean. Since I've seen it, I can tell you the beginning and the end are the best parts. The middle isn't that great.To set the scene, the first scene is in a nightclub. The aptly named "Stretch" Cox and his troupe are filmed doing a ridiculously impossible limbo, impressing the audience and making them expect just as much fire from the rest of the movie. Jack and Bob are introduced, as friends and partners in the smuggling business, but when they take a job from icy Rita, their friendship is tested. At first she's drawn to the sweet and safe Jack, but when Bob is around, there's just no ignoring her real feelings. For the most part, the love triangle is overshadowed by the smuggling and boat businesses, and that's why the movie isn't very interesting. I'm really not a Rita Hayworth fan, so I tended to fast forward her scenes. I've never understood why she played in roles where she was supposed to be irresistible, but to each his own. If you agree with me, you can check out the beginning, get the gist of the love triangle, and then skip to the last fifteen or twenty minutes when things get really exciting. No spoilers here, but the last few scenes are very good.

digimurph A feckless Tony (Jack Lemmon) comes off as deluded and pathetic by falling for the faithless Irena (Rita Hayworth) character, maybe only realizing at the end what a favor his long time friend and partner Felix (Robert Mitchum) does by keeping them apart.Lemmon plays his typical 'good guy not seeing the bad around him' character, yet without the upbeat success in the end. He seems to be always falling on his face in this movie.When he falls for Rita Hayworth, she is looking to 'better deal' him from the beginning with her interest in the cynical hardened Robert Mitchum. Mitchum, seeing her for what she is, wisely moves on.When Felix leaves and Tony remains by Irena, she attaches to him only until Felix's return, acting the girlfriend out of convenience. She then promptly flips, rejecting Tony, who had just risked his life to return to her, while Felix risks his to save Tony!If there is any character study here it is in how Robert Mitchum, who sees Irena for the 'user' she is, does everything from trying to get them jailed to accepting her 'profession of love' in the end and keeping her from making Tony her next victim.In the end, Tony still wants revenge, even after Felix saves his life. It is only when Irena shows her true colors that he backs down, not fully appreciating all his friend has done for him.

FrostyChud I liked it! At first I thought it was going to be a corny Jack Lemmon comedy but it turned out to be something totally different. I love movies that shift gears halfway through (Psycho, Vertigo)...this movie does the same thing. Even if it probably wasn't intentional, it was effective. I liked the film's bravery...women like Rita like men like Mitchum, and that's the long and the short of it. The last scene was pretty powerful...that kiss! OUCH! I think the long interlude with Jack Lemmon stuck on the ship was important...as if what was happening back on the island (the inevitable affair between Rita and Robert) were too unbearable to show...this is a film about solitude...

James Hitchcock Two American sailors, Felix and Tony, are co-owners of a tramp boat which they use for small-scale smuggling around the Caribbean. One day, however, they receive a more lucrative proposition. They are offered $1000 to transport Irena, a beautiful but stateless Eastern European refugee, from one island to another. As normally happens in films like this, both men fall in love with her, and they come to blows, their friendship forgotten.The two men are quite different in character. Tony, a bachelor, is a romantic and idealistic young man who has come to care deeply for Irena. Felix is a divorcée, several years older than Tony; the failure of his brief marriage has left him a hard-bitten and cynical misogynist. He also has a nasty streak in him, shown when, under a pretence of friendship, he tells Tony to beware of Irena who is a woman of immoral character. His real motive, of course, is to leave Irena free for himself. When this ploy fails, he tips off the coastguard about Tony's smuggling activities.The first part of the film is dominated by the Tony/Felix/Irena love triangle, but about halfway through Felix and Irena suddenly disappear from the action and the film abruptly changes from a romantic melodrama to a disaster movie, a sort of poor man's "Poseidon Adventure". Tony has signed as a crewman on board a Greek freighter and is injured when it is involved in a collision with a liner. Tony's injuries are in themselves relatively minor, certainly not life-threatening, but he is nevertheless in grave danger as he is trapped by a fallen iron girder and the ship is on fire. To make things worse, it is carrying a potentially explosive cargo.This was Rita Hayworth's first film after a four-year absence from the screen, caused by events in her private life. Rita remained a major sex symbol for over two decades because she was able to change her style of beauty as she got older. In early films such as "You'll Never Get Rich" she was an innocent, girl-next-door type. In what might be called her "middle period", the period of "Gilda" or "The Lady from Shanghai" she was a seductive femme fatale. Here, at the age of 39, she plays a glamorous, sophisticated older woman, and still looks as attractive as ever, especially in a swimsuit.This is, moreover, a very accomplished acting performance. Irena seems to have had a somewhat shady past, the full details of which are never made clear in the film, but one does not sense from Rita's interpretation that she is as immoral as Felix makes out. There is a sense that Irena has had a difficult life in Europe and that she has known sadness, perhaps even tragedy. She is reserved on the surface but one senses strong feelings beneath. (This is one of two meanings of the title "Fire down Below", the other referring to the literal fire which has broken out on the ship).Jack Lemmon as Tony plays his part reasonably well, but this is not a particularly good film. There are several reasons for this. The race against time to free Tony from the burning ship does not generate as much tension as one might have expected. The two halves of the film do not fit together well, and the change from one to the other is too abrupt. Irena and Felix reappear towards the end, but only Robert Mitchum has much to do; Rita's participation is effectively over by half-time.Felix is a key character, but Mitchum hesitates between two possible interpretations of the role. He seems unsure whether Felix is basically a decent but flawed individual or basically a nasty piece of work who redeems himself by one act of selfless bravery. He attempts both interpretations in the course of the film, and ends up making neither convincing. The film-makers were obviously guided by the normal convention that in any film involving a love-triangle it will be the first name above the title who gets the girl. (Lemmon was later to become one of Hollywood's biggest names, but in 1957 it was Mitchum who got first billing). The ending, in which Irena ends up with Felix rather than Tony, struck me as psychologically implausible and dramatically false. A marriage between Irena and Tony might have had some chance of working; one between her and Felix would serve no purpose except to provide employment for the divorce lawyers. Despite its three major-league stars, "Fire Down Below" is no more than a minor-league melodrama. 5/10