On Dangerous Ground (1951) brazenly parades all its many flaws for a breathless 82 minutes......
But you can't look away.
Not so much a unified film, it plays more like two separate trailers for two separate movies.........one for an ultra-noir about a burned out cop who's taken to pounding on suspects.........and the second for a taciturn,more reserved city cop adrift in snowy landscapes while falling for the blind sister of the killer he's hunting.
The only thing the two chunks of the film have in common: the cop in each half is played by Robert Ryan, in top form.
First up comes the fast 'n sketchy pissed-off burnout story........Ryan's Jim Wilson, disgusted with big city crime, ruptures a perp's bladder during one of his more gentle interrogations. Of course, it's 1951, so this only earns him a relatively modest warning from his chief (Ed Begley). But oopsie.....Jim loses his volcanic temper again with another scumbag, prompting the Chief to ship the raging cop up north.....to the upstate frosty tundras where a teen girl's murderer needs catching.
Thus ends the first half of the movie.......and then it's off the blinding white snowy hills where our boy Jim, now way more restrained and quiet, goes killer-huntin' along with the murdered girl's furious, borderline hysterical father (Ward Bond, at his very Ward Bond-iest).
Their chase leads them to the remote house of the murderer's sister (Ida Lupino) a doe-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights blind girl.......surprise, surprise, big Jim's instantly smitten, his hardened heart melting faster than a global warmed Alaska......
And there you have the two stories jammed into "On Dangerous Ground"s swift running time.......but it's the second half that stays with you, for multiple reasons......
There's the sad, final twist.....Lupino's killer brother revealed as a terrified, mentally challenged youngster.....he's like a puppy-dog version of Lenny from "Of Mice And Men"....
Then there's the pure Hollywood-ized ending, designed to lift an audience's hearts.....(but asking them to shut their brains off to swallow it.....)
Best of all, there's a stellar, classic performance by the
real MVP of this film, the legendary composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann's prime showstopper here is his " The Death Hunt". It's an explosive symphonic burst of pure excitement that accompanies Ryan and Bond as they scramble after their quarry through icy, unforgiving snowscapes.
The wildly frenzied music remained one of Herrmann's favorite scoring moments and you can easily hear why.......( listen carefully and you can also pick up snatches of themes he later put to use in "Vertigo" and "North By Northwest.")
The movie? A slapped together mess......barely stitched together with tropes borrowed from dozens of other, better movies. But director Nicholas Ray, his actors and Bernard Herrmann function at the very pinnacle of their talents.......and BQ loved every deeply flawed minute of it. 4 stars (****)
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