Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

MartinHafer Joe Barton (George Raft) is traveling to neutral Turkey during WWII. En route, a woman gives him money to hold...as she says she's being followed. He agrees to help...which is a very bad thing. This is because he then finds himself pulled into the world of spies and intrigue...and German and possibly Russian agents are chasing him all about the country trying to beat him up or even kill him. They think he still has the money and is somehow involved in some plot involving a fake story about the Soviet Army invading Turkey! So, much of the film is spent running about the country dodging one problem after another. It sure does suck to be Joe Barton!In some ways, this is like the more famous "Casablanca". It co- stars Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre but it's also set in an exotic city filled with folks of many nationalities and it all centers on an American who finds himself in the middle of everything. But, in other ways, it reminds me a lot of "The Maltese Falcon"--with lots of folks bashing each other over the head, killing each other and no clear indication as to what motivates some of these folks. Overall, this is an enjoyable film but one that isn't particularly outstanding. Some of it is because Raft, as usual, was pretty low energy and uninteresting. Some of it is because the film mostly consisted of lots of escapes and a lot of talking. Not bad...but lacking something to make it great.

Robert J. Maxwell Routine Warners espionage story, directed with no nonsense by Raoul Walsh. The director was responsible a few years earlier for the unexpectedly humane "High Sierra." There's a car chase here, too, but not nearly as effective as the one in which Bogart leads a horde of law-enforcement officers on a frantic and dusty pursuit into the mountains.Peter Lorre, as a Russian agent, and the pachydermal Sidney Greenstreet as the resident Nazi chief, seem left over from "The Maltese Falcon," with little of the inventiveness of the original. Brenda Marshall, a virago who was married to William Holden, has little to do. George Raft describes her as "good looking" and he's right. Raft himself is as ligneous as ever. He never relaxes. His expression is always one of vigilance. He doesn't move much, and when he does he strides, but his eyes are always alert, darting from one character to another, as if forever waiting to be betrayed. He's rarely disappointed. Turhan Bey, sleekly handsome, gets to speak Turkish, an ignoble tongue, if you ask me. The dialog runs along the lines of, "Oh, a tough guy, hey?"The MacGuffin is a set of phony plans that Russia (our ally in 1943) is supposed to have drawn up to immediately invade Turkey, the setting of the movie. The plans will be made public, arousing the nation's paranoia, and Hitler will move in and "protect" Turkey from the commies, using the nation's oil for its war effort. The plans are first in one person's hands, then another's. Finally the entire conspiracy gets the deep six.The pace never flags. Raoul Walsh knows how to keep things moving, but the narrative is pedestrian and the story and characters have little dash.

zardoz-13 The central character in "Background to Danger" was an American agent operating outside neutral Turkey. Warner Brothers purchased the film rights to Eric Ambler's 1937 mystery thriller Background to Danger and assigned "Little Caesar" scenarist W.R. Burnett, along with two uncredited writers, William Faulkner and Daniel Fuchs, to change the location of the novel from Austria and Czechoslovakia to Turkey and the Syrian border. The hero in the novel, Kenyon, earns his money as a free-lance journalist, does not carry a gun, but suffers from a gambling addiction that keeps him short of money. For the film, Burnett and company turned Kenyon into Joe Barton, a gun-chewing American agent masquerading as an equipment salesman passing through Turkey. Burnett remembers rewriting the story to suit actor George Raft who played the lead character. Burnett said: "I was always afraid that I'd have to face Eric Ambler after what we did to that (his novel). The point of "Background to Danger" was that this man was a salesman, an outsider, and suddenly things begin to happen to him that he can't understand. And he gets involved in all this espionage. But Raft wouldn't do it unless he was an FBI man. The whole story went out the window."In the novel, the Soviets and the Nazis clash over Rumanian oil rather than the issue of Turkish neutrality. Essentially, Burnett updated the action and exploited Turkey's precarious neutrality. In the film, ruthless Colonel Robinson (Sidney Greenstreet of "Casablanca") tells one of his Nazi subordinates, "We must create an incident, any kind of incident, to convince Turkey, that Russia is about to attack her. How we accomplish this makes no matter." Robinson forges a number of maps and strategic documents that appear to be the Russian General Staff's master plan for the invasion of Turkey, and he intends to pay a newspaper to publish this ersatz material to cause a Turkish uprising. The scene shifts to a train depot in Aleppo, Syria, as Joe Barton spots a beautiful but mysterious woman, Ana Remzi (Osa Messen of "Tokyo Rose") , on the Bagdad-to-Istanbul express en route to Ankara. He has the porter seat him in the same compartment with Ana, and they strike up a conversation. While Barton departs momentarily to get Ana a pillow, she spots Ivor Rashenko, a tall, mustached man who has been following her. When Barton returns, she explains her predicament. She offers to pay him handsomely if he will hold $5000 worth of securities for her, because she fears that the authorities may search her and confiscate them. Since Barton is an American, she informs him, nobody has the authority to search him. Barton accepts the securities without question or money. In the book, a Jewish man confronted Kenyon on the train and gave the nearly broke journalist a tidy sum to conceal the documents should anything happen to him. After they detrain in Ankara, Barton goes to Ana's hotel in the seedy section of town, and she staggers out of her bedroom to meet him with a knife in her back. As Barton tries to leave, he crosses paths with two Russians agents, Nicolai Zaleshoff (Peter Lorre of "Casablanca") and his sister Tamara (Brenda Marshall of "The Constant Nymph") who want the sheaf of securities that Ana entrusted to Barton. Barton returns to his hotel, examines the envelope, and learns its contents' true value. The Nazis bang on his door, identify themselves as the police, and escort him away to their headquarters. Colonel Robinson introduces himself and tries to buy the documents from Barton. He knows that Barton has the documents because Ana Remzi was one of his agents. Barton refuses to sell them, so Robinson's henchmen take him down to the cellar to beat him with a blackjack. Before Robinson's sadistic henchman, Mailler (Kurt Katch of "The Pharaoh's Curse"), can get the information out of Barton, Nicolai intervenes. Nicolai and Tamara explain to Barton that they are Soviet agents, and they want the forged documents. Suspicious of Nicolai and Tamara, Barton agrees to turn the documents over to them at the Soviet Embassy. Unfortunately for Barton, when he returns to his hotel room, he finds the documents missing. Meanwhile, Robinson recovered the documents, went to Istanbul, and bribed a newspaper publisher to print them. Barton catches up with Robinson and agrees to switch sides and join the Nazis. As a test of his loyalty, Robinson asks Barton to shoot Nicolai, but the gun that Robinson gives Barton has no bullets in it. A fight ensues, Nicolai dies, but Barton escapes and prevents the newspaper publisher from printing the documents. He captures Robinson and turns him over to the Turkish authorities. He and Tamara drive off to Cairo "to cement Russian/American relations."Raoul Walsh keeps "Background to Danger" moving at a breezy clip. George Raft is perfectly cast with solid support, especially from Lorre and Marshall. Nevertheless, "Background to Danger" cannot compare with Walsh's earlier Errol Flynn epic "Desperate Journey," one of the best propaganda action comedies to come out of the war. "Background to Danger" is worth watching, but it isn't particularly memorable, just efficiently made and acted.

bill-790 It seems that most IMDb reviewers have a pretty low opinion of "Background to Danger." Well, I admit that many of the criticisms of this film have merit. First of all, George Raft was decidedly not near the top of Hollywood actors. Second, there is, as many have observed, more than a little resemblance between this film and some others, such as "Casablanca." And I keep wondering what the film would have been like with Bogart, Cagney, or Garfield in the lead role.Nevertheless, this is a film I have enjoyed many times and probably will again. Some of Raft's lines probably would not have worked with Cagney or Garfield, but they are okay coming from Raft. And, of course, the supporting cast is really excellent.All in all, I think you will enjoy this film if you don't go in expecting something on the level of "Casablanca" or even that of "Sahara," a Columbia film of the same year starring Humphrey Bogart. In short, enjoy the fast pace and the really great support from Greenstreet, Lorre, Brenda Marshall and the others.