Background to Danger (1943)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Propaganda piece from Warner with an all-star cast to take us home. George Raft plays an American who meets a strange woman (Brenda Marshall) on a train and soon finds himself being chased by Nazi agents. Turns out there's a German (Sydney Greenstreet) in Turkey who is trying to get the neutral country to join the Nazi party and it's up to Raft to try and stop it. Considering the fact that our country was at war, all these WWII pieces coming from Hollywood was understandable but one wishes a little more time was spent on their screenplays. This one here was apparently written in 1937 but then updated to add in the Nazi plot but very little else was actually done. There were times when the story seemed to forget where it was going as it's pretty much all over the place and the actual going ons are rather boring and not that believable. The "background" in the title is exactly what the film needed because it's like we're put in the middle of a story yet we're never given any idea of how it started or why. In the end, the story comes off rather weak and rushed. Another problem is that the producer's were obviously trying to cash-in on the recently released CASABLANCA. Thanks to TCM you can watch countless movies that have been forgotten or overlooked the past few decades and it's rather amazing to see how many times Warner went to the CASABLANCA well in such a short period of time. The film does benefit from a rather short running time, which helps keep things moving. The main reason to watch the film is because of its attractive cast with Raft leading the way as our tough talking hero. Raft is pretty much what you'd expect from him as he walks hard and punches even tougher. The screenplay does allow him a couple good one-liners, which he puts to go use. Greenstreet is brilliant as usual and even though he's playing a Nazi you just want to love the guy. Peter Lorre plays a Russian spy and manages to mix it up with the rest of the cast quite nicely. Marshall, on the other hand, left me pretty cold as I never cared for her character or the performance. I'm not sure if she was just bored by the material or if Walsh wanted her to act this way just there's just no life to her. This is far from a horrible movie but there's just not enough heart and soul to carry the thing and in the end you'll feel as if you've seen this story several times before and in much better quality.
