Steineded How sad is this?

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

MartinHafer Mike Latimer (Richard Widmark) is a famous novelist who's dropped out of circulation. A reporter (Jane Greer) is undercover--trying to wrangle an exclusive interview with this mercurial man. However, although she is able to make contact with him and befriend him, he doesn't know she's a reporter. What they both don't know is that the plane he's flying them in across the Central American jungle is going to conk out...and leave them stranded in the middle of no where. Does it sound like it couldn't get any worse? Well, it can. Although they are saved from the wreckage, their benefactors turn out to be Nazis hiding out in the jungle and they're not about to let the pair escape if they can help it. Soon, it's a long and torturous trek through the unforgiving jungle...with these nasty jerks in hot pursuit.While this isn't one of Widmark's very best films, it is quite good and the Nazi theme worked since it was only about a dozen years since the war ended. Tense, well crafted and well worth seeing. Besides, Greer nearly died making this film....so don't you owe it to her sacrifice to see the movie?!I originally planned on giving this film an 8...it's really good. But near the end, Latimer takes out one of the baddies and then doesn't bother picking up the guy's gun as he makes his escape. This simply makes no sense and annoyed me.By the way, early on you see the reporter looking through a magazine with a cover story about Latimer. While the magazine looks a lot like LOOK magazine, its name is SIGHT....a rather clever little play on words.

dougdoepke No need to recap the Most Dangerous Game and Five Came Back plot. Now I have as much respect for stars Widmark, Greer, and Howard as the next old movie buff, but the set-up to the chase goes on too long and too mildly to create a suspenseful whole. I suspect the drawn-out preliminaries were to justify that marquee cast. Yet, the on-again, off-again romantic interludes, plus Howard's non-menacing menace, undercut that impact. Then too, director Boulting films in impersonal and impassive style that fails to create the expected intensity—just count the close-ups (I stopped at zero). Thus, the narrative remains at the mercy of a padded script.Of course, the jungle locations lend eye-appeal and stimulating exotica. However, Boulting largely fails to exploit that menacing strangeness. The chase sequence, the movie's centerpiece, remains little more than an implausibly executed slog through the mud that again fails to generate needed suspense. To me, the pursuers appear in greater danger than the pursued; plus, how easily the dogs are thrown off track and then inexplicably regain it. I realize these gripes go against majority opinion. Still, I found the result disappointing given the promising ingredients. Say what you will about the old studios, sound stages, and b&w filming, but RKO really knew how to orchestrate the same elements back in 1932. Above all, this updated version needs a more focused rewrite and a more apt director.

Robert J. Maxwell Rather fun. Widmark is an Ernest Hemingway figure who is suffering from writer's block and has hidden away in a tiny Mexican village where he spends his time fishing and drinking. Jane Greer is on the editorial board of a New York magazine who disguises her identity and seeks him out to write a tell-all piece about him.When the time comes for Greer to leave, Widmark offers to fly her from the minuscule airfield of San Marcos (not the one in Texas) to Mexico City, but Greer innocently places her metal notepad next to the compass and the airplane gets lost over the Mexican jungle.After the crash, which is ill-handled by the producer, Widmark and Greer find themselves guests at an ancient but elaborate hacienda in the middle of the bush. Their hosts are Trevor Howard, who turns out to be Lord Haw Haw in hiding, and Peter van Eyck, his companion who claims to be a Dutch archaeologist but is really an escaped Nazi. It's always interesting to see which cultural group the Thought Police will use as villains. One might think, well, 1956, maybe a secret band of Soviet terrorists spreading communism among the Yanomami, but, no, they haven't forgiven the Germans yet.Widmark begins to twig early on. He's heard their voices somewhere. As Lord Haw Haw, of course, Widmark would have heard his propaganda broadcasts in England during the war. And when, at dinner, van Eyck says he's studying the pre-Mayan cultures of the area, Widmark, in a tone full of suspicion, remarks that he didn't think there were any cultures before the Mayan. Of course, he's wrong. Where does he think the Mayans sprang from, a nest of ants, like myrmidons? Anyway, all that is prologue. The last third of the movie is an exciting chase through the bush, borrowing heavily from "The Most Dangerous Game" and "The Hounds of Zaroff." After they escape, Widmark and Greer plunge through jungle and rivers armed with nothing but a bush knife and the various traps Widmark manages to set to knock off the men and dogs who are in hot pursuit.There is no poetry in the film. Widmark may be a writer but after a brief exchange with Greer in a cantina, that persona is quickly dispensed with and he becomes a traditional macho anti-intellectual hero in an adventure movie. And when the duo in danger hide a few feet away from Howard and van Eyck, I thought of a similar moment in Fritz Lang's "An American Guerrilla in the Philippines," when Tom Ewell is under a log a few feet from a Japanese patrol. His feet are bare, and they rest on an ant hill. It's a wrenching scene and there's nothing like it in this film from Ray Bolton. All it would have required is a moment's creative thought. Some goofs are obvious too. Widmark manages to escape from a building by killing an armed man with a trick. He leaps over the body and rushes off without bothering to pick up the rifle and arm himself.That lack of originality doesn't spoil the movie. It's engaging at first. Then it becomes tense -- and the tension lasts until the end. Widmark is almost always likable, even as the heavy, and Greer exudes class. You know, though, if Howard and van Eyck were nowhere near civilization, where did they get all their booze from?

samhill5215 It's hard for me to believe that this film has rated as low as it has. I found it an exciting, spellbinding and visually engrossing update of Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dagnerous Game". Having seen the original with Joel McCrea and Fay Wray this is clearly not a remake. The storyline is updated to a post WWII scenario replete with a British turncoat and Nazi fugitives in Mexico. But the basic concept of hunting down humans is intact. Both sides of the conflict are dealt with in an intelligent and even sensitive manner. The characters are all believable and their motives clearly enunciated. This is clearly not a simpleminded adventure but one dealing with complex human emotions. Much of the film's success is due to the three headliners, Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard and Jane Greer who perform admirably. All in all, highly recommended. Run out and get it, you'll spend a very enjoyable hour and a half.