ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

Micransix Crappy film

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

calvinnme ... and as such the success of "On Dangerous Ground" is no accident. Some of the major "players" here were creating some really good stuff, years 1946 to mid-1950s. The late 1940s and early 1950s were the peak directorial years of director Nicholas Ray. Ida Lupino, who was partnered with Ryan in another noir was a great actress and one of the most under-rated directors of the 1950's. I was also quite struck by the haunting Herrmann score, (especially in the Lupino scenes) and A.I. Bezzirides & Nicholas Ray's well written main character, George E. Diskant's dramatic b & w cinematography, and Robert Ryan's splendid acting.This film confirmed for me something about Ryan as an actor: no matter what, he never pandered to the audience's desire to like him. He refused to let his guard down or to have his character manipulate us into thinking, "Ahhh, he's really a nice guy after all." One can never be sure with Ryan.The movie starts off in a dark, dreary atmosphere as Robert Ryan's character is a withdrawn, heavily-tempered street cop who is about to lose his job if he doesn't control himself from roughing up suspects. It is agreed that he go on assignment in a rural area where a young killer is on the loose. The trail leads up to an isolated area of snowy mountains. He then meets Ida Lupino's character, a lonely and dependent blind woman.I enjoyed the economical way that we are shown the families of his co-workers briefly, as when one of the cops, a father, who is watching TV with his growing brood, silently goes into the bedroom to get dressed for work - his wife helps him to prepare his "armor", physically and mentally - and then he goes down to the waiting car. In marked contrast we see Ryan, already looking as though he has indigestion as he eats his lonely meal in a bleak room illumined by a few paltry objects that tell us quite a bit about Ryan. There's his athletic trophy, his crucifix on the dresser, and what's he studying while he eats? Police pictures of known criminals. Perhaps that disgusted expression on Ryan's face is self revulsion - not just a dogged determination to burn those grim features into his memory.There is a reflection of Ryan in the two people he's with once he's exiled from the city to the country to help find the boy killer. Ryan's more humane instincts are embodied by the protective, gentle, blind Lupino character and every blessed, brutal impulse in him is personified by Ward Bond's grieving, frantic, blundering father hell-bent on revenge- - forget all that stuff about understanding .In one of the more harrowing scenes during the burnt out Ryan's brutalization of a suspect, he cries out to the guy he's pummeling, "Why do you make me do it? You know you're gonna talk - I'm gonna make you talk. I always make you punks talk! Why? Why?" Does he really expect an answer, except in his own soul? The end of the movie was softened under alleged pressure from the studio for a more conventional, redemptive ending, but I don't think that the future's going to be all lollipops and rainbows by any means.Oh, and there are some nifty little parts filled out quite amply by a very young Nita Talbot as an underage bar girl and Olive Carey as the stoic mother of the murdered girl. It's a fine film, well done, and highly recommended.

jeffhaller125 This is unlike any film I have ever seen. It actually plays like two different movies and if you see them separately, each feels complete. The city part is probably the most honest and gripping depiction of the police force and its darkness. The film then does an about face in the country, in an entirely different rhythm that is equally dark. It is a character study in which all of the characters earn our sympathy. We can't help but understand why they behave as they do. I often think of the 1950s as a very weak decade for American film. This one stands among the best. Had the French made this movie, it would be talked about as a masterpiece.I heard that the ending was dramatically changed from what was originally intended. The studio made the right decision. The audience deserves a happy ending to this almost gruesome tale.

secondtake On Dangerous Ground (1952)Certainly a classic noir but an odd one. It has the personal introspective digging and bits of romance that director Nicholas Ray is so good at. And it has the struggling urban man with a weight that seems unbearable, at odds with even his best friends. It's filmed really well, by a new talent who later moved to television, George Diskant, and it has a score by none other than Bernard Herrmann. Yes, this movie has all the drippings of a classic. It even daringly mixes up heavy urban society and a raw rural mountain existence in basically two halves to the movie, much like the spectacular "Out of the Past."Nothing goes terribly wrong here, but the story just doesn't quite hold water. At first it's okay that we don't know quite what the main point is, and where our sympathies are meant to lie. But eventually there is a diffusion that gets in the way. This seems like a Ray strategy. Most of his films, the famous ones I've seen, tend to do this in a magical way. They start out with one thing and end up doing another. (The two main ones that are in many top ten lists from this era are "They Live by Night" and "In a Lonely Place.") Robert Ryan is certainly the star, even if Ida Lupino gets first billing--she is only in the second half of the film. Ryan's classic brooding evilness never reaches the sympathetic or pathetic levels we might expect of him, but he's supposed to be a tender guy under it all, waiting for someone or something to turn that on. Lupino plays a blind woman (this becomes apparent right away to the viewer but for some reason not to the characters), and of course we sympathize with here. She is strong and kind and wise. And she needs someone. It seems that Ryan is too caught up in his inner turmoil to quiet make it work, however, and he ends up being just a great cop by the end. There is a clash of cultures that is a slightly corny--the city slicker in the country, and so on. And there is the mingling of the two personalities, which lacks some kind of inner magic. (You might say the same in "In a Lonely Place" but it seems more an intentional ploy there.) There is also the problem of the basic crime aspects of the plot. We aren't meant to care too much about that, but it takes up much of the screen time and we need to make it make sense. It's a little compacted and clumsy for all its inner angst. The blind woman's little brother is mentally disturbed--and there's even an implication she skipped out on surgery for her eyes because of needing to care for him. But things have spun out of control, and she can't do much about it any more.See this? Well, absolutely if you like the actors, the director, or noirs in general. It fits into the pack well, and has aspects that are moving and well done. That it doesn't gel into a masterpiece is aggravating because the material is really terrific at its core--a man is fighting for his emotional survival, and seems to stumble on a solution in the least likely way. Beautiful.

davidjanuzbrown I have read some reviews about this film and how Nicholas Ray did not care for "The Happy Ending" that RKO forced upon him. This was one case where the studio was right. Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) was a tough loner cop along the lines of "Dirty Harry" Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), or Jack Murphy (Charles Bronson) in "Murphy's Law", who was very destructive towards others and even himself, who simply did not care about the "Constitutional Rights" of criminal suspects, and would not hesitate to beat them up (Although Miranda v Arizona did not become the Law for over a decade later). Spoilers: Wilson is sent upstate to investigate the murder of Julie Brent(Patricia Prest) It was really to to get him away from the complaints about his tactics by his boss Capt. Brawley (Ed Begley). There he meets Mary Malden (Ida Lupino) a very sweet woman who is legally blind (Although an operation can restore her sight, but she keeps putting it off because of her brother Danny (Sumner Williams), a developmentally challenged adult). Danny, who is Mary's lifeline to the world, is the killer of Julie, and he is hunted down by Wilson and Julie's father Walter (An extremely angry and obsessed Ward Bond). Danny is eventually killed in an accident, Wilson leaves and Mary will have to fend for herself. However, Wilson realizes that he needs Mary every bit as she needs him and goes back and gets her, and she will be able to get the operation she needs. The themes to this film were loneliness and blindness: Wilson is blind to things such as love and compassion, just as much as Mary is blind to things around her, and both were on the path to destruction (Wilson by harming others and (or) himself, and Mary by having no one get basic things like food and fuel (It was a snowbound area she was in)), and both were lonely in their lives, and both depended on an unsavory element to survive: Wilson with the criminals and Mary with her psychotic brother. But by bringing Mary back with him (The scene of him driving and thinking about Mary was particularly effective), they both had the opportunity to find the things they were missing in their lives. This last part is where RKO got it right: By giving Wilson the chance for redemption, Mary is able to win as well. Will it be a happily ever after ending like a fairy tale? Not at all (Mary still has to deal with the death of her brother, and Wilson still has to deal with the criminals he encounters everyday). But it is an ending where you feel good that there is hope for Jim and Mary, while not thinking it is totally unrealistic. It is a noir classic. 10/10 stars.