Dead Reckoning [VHS]
Dead Reckoning [VHS] Review
Humphrey Bogart’s performance in this film is what makes it rise above 2.5 or 3 stars out of 5. Columbia is obviously trying to replicate the elements of the types of films that Bogart did so well in the 1940’s over at Warner Brothers. The oddest thing about this film is Bogart’s dialogue, especially during his voice-overs. At times it comes on so strong as to approach a parody of Bogart as Bogart. If any other actor were speaking this dialogue it might evoke laughter if not confusion, yet Humphrey Bogart makes it work.
Here Bogart is paratrooper Rip Murdock, just recently home from the war with Sergeant Johnny Drake, who is to receive the Congressional medal of honor. However, when Drake disappears right before the ceremony, Murdock gets permission from his superiors to find out what happened to his usually reliable friend and fellow soldier. Murdock follows his buddy’s trail to Gulf City, a bar and gambling joint there that is run by a mobster, the girl that stole Johnny’s heart – young and beautiful – and wealthy – widow Dusty Chandler (Lizabeth Scott), and a trail of clues fraught with mystery and murder. It’s rather obvious that Lizabeth Scott is Columbia’s answer to Lauren Bacall in this one, and that gangster Martinelli and henchman Krauss are attempting to duplicate the types of roles played by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in Bogart’s successful Warner pictures. Although these three can’t begin to match their Warner counterparts, and at times Scott painfully overacts, they do lend enough credible support to give Bogey a framework in which to play an interesting character in a rather intriguing mystery that has plenty of atmosphere.
The video is darker than I expected. The film is better than public domain quality, but it lacks the clarity and contrast I would expect from a studio release of a classic film.
Dead Reckoning [VHS] Overview
The shadow of World War II falls over this stateside film noir thriller about a GI paratrooper (Humphrey Bogart) who trails his AWOL war buddy to a treacherous city populated by gamblers, goons, pug cops, and the smoky, suspicious Lizabeth Scott, a seductive femme who may be fatale. Bogie’s tight lipped, war hardened intensity dominates the B roster of supporting actors (Morris Carnovsky as a finicky nightclub owner with a gambling sideline, Marvin Miller as his brutal baby-faced thug) and the plot echoes with elements of earlier Bogie classics The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon recast on a low budget. Scott is, for all her fog-voiced sultriness, no Lauren Bacall, but her mannered performance is appropriately ambiguous and the film’s cynical edge, ruthless desperation, and tarnished view of small-time hoodlums with big dreams casts a darker shadow unique to Hollywood’s postwar funk. –Sean Axmaker
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