Second Chance

A film with Robert Mitchum and Jack Palance and they slug it out in a cable car at the end of the film! Sounds like exciting stuff.! Unfortunately the film is heavy going up to the final climax. Jack Palance feels it necessary to shoot someone in an early scene and then the film just plods along with little excitement. Worth watching for the final exciting action.

Second Chance (1953)

To really enjoy this movie you have to know its place in the RKO filmmaking world. And you'd probably have to see it in 3D as it was originally intended. You won't get too far with the meandering plot that doesn't create tension, or romance, or even curiosity. We are made to simply watch and wait for something to happen.

Of course, something does happen, and in a big way, near the end, something completely separate from the intended plot. And even in 2D you get the drama and the dizzying depth of it all. And you get to watch three very big stars in expensive Technicolor--producer Howard Hughes really laid it all out for this one. Robert Mitchum looks good as both lonely man wooing the girl and as a boxer (briefly). Linda Darnell is the woman every man wants, apparently (especially Hughes, by the way). And Jack Palance is like a piece of wreckage, wired up and angry and with a face to sink a thousand ships.

The setting is interesting, too, all shot on location in Mexico, except some reshooting of the boxing scene (oddly enough, because it looks so authentic). Mitchum and Palance both got into some local fistfighting, and traded blows once during filming. When the movie came out, even though it has hardly any plot (other than surviving the final disaster scene), it was a success. Good thing, because RKO was financially reeling, and would in two years be bought by a rubber company and by the end the of the decade was the first of the Majors (the big 5 Hollywood studios) to completely go under.

So, don't expect much and you'll find lots of little things to enjoy. And maybe they'll get the Technicolor goosed up properly in a re-release someday, complete with 3D effects.

Rather dire star-vehicle for Robert Mitchum and Linda Darnell. Gangster's girl in South America, anxious to turn herself over to the police and release incriminating evidence to Washington officials against her boyfriend, instead finds herself on the run from the mobster's murderous stooge (whom she's also apparently been involved with!). She uses a smitten professional boxer from the States to get the thug off her tail, but he's relentless and they all end up in a crippled cable car suspended perilously over the valley. Muddled script by Oscar Millard and Sydney Boehm, from D.M. Marshman Jr.'s original treatment, makes a particular mess of the relationship between breathless Darnell and good-guy Mitchum (she's such a complete blank anyway, it's confounding why Mitchum would even give her the time of day). The climax is well-directed (if visually unconvincing), there's a colorful wedding celebration with fireworks, and Jack Palance is a menacing heavy. ** from ****

When characters in a film get into a cable car, you know it's only a matter of time before PING! the cable snaps. Strand by strand, of course, for maximum

tension (ha ha). Mitchum the boxer and Darnell the ex-moll on the run take

the fateful cable car up to a little Mexican hilltop town whose inhabitants have created a totally cardboard experience for tourists. The architecture is

"hacienda style" and lady guests can buy pseudo flamenco costumes in the

"vibrant, bustling" street market. Any Mexican not employed in the hotel,

selling peasant tat, or playing unctuous Mariachi music is out in the plaza

waving a balloon and shouting for joy, or performing a sinuous dance of no

particular origin. It reminds me of the many embarrassing ads on British TV

featuring funny Europeans. Then the main cast members climb aboard that

cable car and it becomes a lifeboat movie and you can write the script

yourself. Two cheers, though, for the feisty British middle-aged couple ("My

wife can help - she was a nurse's aide in London during the Blitz!").

Mitchum is brilliant as usual but Darnell is a little clumsy in the love scenes and speaks as though she was dubbing her lines.

SECOND CHANCE is a routinely-plotted thriller with an above-average setting (the glorious mountain top terrain of Mexico) and a decent cast to lift it above the norm for the genre. I should also note that it was originally released in 3D in 1953 as part of the short-lived 3D boom in movies, although watching it 'flat' there aren't many (or any) eye-popping sequences that stand out as in the likes of HOUSE OF WAX, for example.

The story opens with some excellent and suspenseful chase sequences in which put-upon heroine Linda Darnell is being hunted through the streets by the vengeful Jack Palance. It turns out that she's a witness ready to testify against a mob boss and he's the bodyguard sent to bring her home. You know the story by now, but what makes this fun is an ultra-laconic Robert Mitchum as a boozy boxer who Darnell ends up hooking up with.

Sadly the middle part of the film gets a little tedious with some drawn-out romance scenes and the great Palance left skulking in the background. However, things pick up for an extended, disaster-fuelled climax set in and atop a broken cable car. There are some great fight scenes and stunts which make full use of the taut scenario. SECOND CHANCE isn't the greatest film out there, but it's certainly a distinctive and memorable one.