Made in 1961 and set in Vienna and cold-war Eastern Europe this is a tense b/w thriller based on an Alistair McLean novel. Widmark plays a rather shady character, possibly a bounty hunter, possibly a spy, it's difficult to tell; at any rate he sells his services and is hired to track down a Hungarian scientist and help him escape from Soviet-controlled Budapest. To do this he first needs to find the scientist's daughter who has already made it out of Budapest and win her trust. But everywhere he goes, someone is following him, someone is watching, and there are people that will make it brutally clear that they don't want him to carry out this mission.
Well I haven't read the novel (yet) but I really liked this film and having read a poor review on IMDB, I didn't expect to. It's pretty tense, and it's pretty violent and quite often you think it's all going pretty badly and how-are-they-going-to-get-out-of-this situation ... but I don't want to spoil anything, just let's say that I really rather rate this one. What a nice surprise that was, as was the quite amusing episode about just over half-way though. Watch again? Certainly. Get the novel? Maybe. The only downside is that it having been shot in black and white means it's awful gloomy sometimes. But then perhaps that qualifies it as a modern noir.
Well I haven't read the novel (yet) but I really liked this film and having read a poor review on IMDB, I didn't expect to. It's pretty tense, and it's pretty violent and quite often you think it's all going pretty badly and how-are-they-going-to-get-out-of-this situation ... but I don't want to spoil anything, just let's say that I really rather rate this one. What a nice surprise that was, as was the quite amusing episode about just over half-way though. Watch again? Certainly. Get the novel? Maybe. The only downside is that it having been shot in black and white means it's awful gloomy sometimes. But then perhaps that qualifies it as a modern noir.
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