Greenes
Please don't spend money on this.
Pacionsbo
Absolutely Fantastic
Derrick Gibbons
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
praxistens848
Low-budget but suspenseful Cold War yarn, with Sterling Hayden & Ruth Roman. Hayden is gruff John Emit, whose car breaks down in California on his road to nowhere (supposedly en route to visit his folks in Texas). The suspiciously friendly Ann Nicholson (Roman) offers Emit a lift, as long as he'll drive some. She's going to New Mexico.Along the way, her psychiatrist (the future Col. Klink, Werner Klemperer) & his nurse pop up; with sundry likewise suspicious characters: cops, a university dean, CIA, FBI (Ken "Festus" Curtis), & hired killers. Ann's carrying missile secrets, which are carved into a ladies' mirror. There's a fine sudden twist to the showdown with the guy for whom the missile secrets are meant.For a low-budget thriller, the acting's surprisingly low-key. Hayden does restrained bewilderment very well: quite contrary to his lead role in "The Killing," a couple years before. Roman is also restrained in her role as a suspected spy, with secrets of her own culled from both sides of the globe. As our Dad used to say, "A goody to see again!"
jjnxn-1
Entertaining chase drama with a cold war twist. Ruth Roman, one of the more under appreciated actresses of the fifties, gives an excellent portrait of a woman pursued. Intelligent and capable with an underlying edge of hysteria since she's never completely sure of what's happening. Made just as the Cold War was starting to really make an impact on public consciousness the film uses that to it's advantage. The requisite romantic subplot is the weakest part of the story but part of that is due to having that stolid block of wood Sterling Hayden in the lead. A stronger actor would have made this even better.A minor spy film but one that keeps the tension taut and is strengthened by the strong work of its leading lady.
drystyx
This is a clever directing job to make a film noir mystery into a good film.Film noir often stumbled from being too Hollywood, with heroes and heroines automatically acting creepy just for the sake of acting creepy.Here, we get the opposite. The best mysteries have the woman being the "woman of mystery", because that is part of being a woman, while being a man means having your mystery come out of your very straight forward approach.Sterling Hayden often acted gruff for the sake of acting gruff. A modern day guy who thought there was always a camera on him.But here he acts more like a believable man from the fifties, or any era before the twenty first century.He becomes the "everyman" who is introduced to a mysterious world, which involves espionage.The CIA and FBI are put in a likable light, which doesn't go over well with those who like the post 1965 cliché. Being 1957, this goes under the old cliché, which really wasn't around long enough to be a cliché. That's why such CIA and FBI characters are still fresh, and in the long run, more believable than the silly assassins of today.What helps here is a great atmosphere. We get some road, and not too much of the cars. We have a few pit stops, and changing scenery, which makes this flow very well.
dbdumonteil
Do you remember "the thirty-nine steps"?Do you remember Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll chained together by handcuffs ?Sterling Hayden and Ruth Roman (who was in Hitchcock's "strangers on a train") have the same misadventure;besides,the doctor and the nurse who "take care" of Mrs Nicholson recall Claude Rains and his mother poisoning Ingrid Bergman in "notorious".It goes without saying that "5 paces to danger" is Hitchcockesque to the core.The plot is bizarre but the two leads make a good pairing and the film ,which begins as a road movie ,then features an almost irrelevant flashback in Germany to continue as a spy thriller ,is rather entertaining.Best scene comes at the end when they visit the so called Kessel in the base: we feel something odd in the air and the bag is a good trick.
