He Ran All the Way

John Garfield stars as low-life crook Nick Robey. He takes part in an armed robbery that leaves a cop dead. Nick befriends Peg Dobbs( Shelley Winters) who thinking this may be the love interest she has been waiting for, invites him to her family's apartment. Peg, along with her father (Wallace Ford), mother (Selena Royle) and little brother (Bobby Hyatt), become terrified hostages, never knowing if or when Nick may blow-up and kill them all.

This small-scale, modestly-budgeted independent production does a tremendous job of evoking the nervous, sweaty environment of its characters. Garfield is terrific as usual, playing a very unsympathetic character with surprising honesty and no glamor. Winters and Ford are also very effective. This film marks the last movie of John Garfield, an amazingly gifted actor, who never had a breakthrough film. While his body of work is substantial, the elusive blockbuster remains just that. Good performances all around, but the screenplay and the setting make for a claustrophobic experience.

Just an aside, but Ford's character's name is Fred Dobbs, Bogie's character in Treasure of the Sierra Madre made three years before. I found that very distracting.

The uptight and dumb smalltime thief Nick Robey (John Garfield) and his partner and only friend Al Molin (Norman Lloyd) robber US$ 10,000.00 from a man, but the heist goes wrong. Al Molin is killed by a policeman and Nick shots him deadly in the spine. He hides out in a public swimming pool and meets the shy spinster Peggy Dobbs (Shelley Winters) in the water. Nick uses Peggy to lie low and leave the plunge. He offers a ride in a taxi to her and she invites him to enter in her apartment, where she introduces her family to him. When Nick discovers that he killed the cop, he decides to use Peggy's apartment as hideout to wait the police manhunt cool down, forcing the family to lodge him. When Nick finds that Peggy loves him, he invites her to leave the town with him and asks her to buy a used runaway car. However, the paranoid Nick cannot trust anybody and believes Peggy has betrayed him.

The film-noir "He Ran All the Way" is the last movie of John Garfield in the role of a man that does not know the meaning of love or family, therefore he cannot believe in a woman in love with him. The storyline is very simple and claustrophobic and four years later, William Wyler made "The Desperate Hours" that has a similar storyline, with a gang that breaks in suburban house and threatens the household. This movie has not been released on Blu-ray, DVD or VHS in Brazil and is only available in cable television. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Por Amor Também Se Mata" ("For Love, It Also Kills")

John Garfield's character in this movie makes his character in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE look like Mr. Easy Going. He's tight as a drum from the opening scene with his nasty mother, through the holdup (with snaky Norman Lloyd as his partner), his flight, and the long scenes with Shelley Winters' family.

Winters is appealing in her role as the plain girl who can't find a man. She falls for the dangerous and casually violent Garfield; but is she really in love with him or trying to assist in his capture? That's where the tension lies in this short thriller. Dalton Trumbo (uncredited as screenwriter) creates good dialog for all the cast members, and pulls together an exciting final 5 minutes with a few plot twists and a gut-wrenching ironic final shot. Catch it if you can, if you're a noir fan.

Worth seeing if for no other reason than Garfield's frantic, breathless performance. The storytelling is unsure at times, but his acting sure isn't. The guy performs as if he's looking straight down the barrel of a loaded shotgun. He really lets it fly over the film's very powerful last ten minutes. Also, Shelly Winters is much more effective here, in a role she virtually perfected (as the lonely, whimpering victim) than she was in the classic "A PLACE IN THE SUN", which also came out that year.

"He Ran All The Way" is John Garfield's final film and he doesn't disappoint his fans. He is dynamic as a cop killer who is on-the-lam and hiding out in the apartment of a middle class family. The film is a taut thriller with many tense moments and Garfield pulls no punches while he devises an escape plan. The captive family is well played by Shelley Winters who falls for the thug, Wallace Ford and Selena Royle her parents and Bobby Hyatt the little brother. There is also a gem of a cameo performance from Gladys George as Garfield's mother and also by Norman Lloyd as his partner in crime. Alas Garfield displays all his bad boy mannerisms and gut wrenching force that we came to expect from him...and what also made him a star.