World for Ransom

I taped World For Ransom when BBC2 screened it during the early hours recently. This is the time when they usually show these sort of movies and I found this one quite good.

Set in Singapore, a group of people plot to kidnap a nuclear scientist who is one of only three people in the whole world who knows how to detonate the H-Bomb. We get to see plenty of people being killed, especially during the final scenes. There is also blackmail, double crossing and punch-ups.

The cast includes Dan Duryea, Patric Knowles (How Green Was My Valley, The Wolf Man), Gene Lockhart (Lost In Space star June's dad) and Nigel Bruce (Dr Watson from the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies) in his last movie.

World For Ransom is quite good and is worth checking out.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

World For Ransom(1954) is an odd item from filmography of Robert Aldrich as it is not as well known as some of his other movies. This is an overlooked movie that would provide a sketch for Kiss Me Deadly(1955). Dan Duryea gives a very good performance as well as Patric Knowles and Marian Carr. The plot of the film recalls The Third Man(1949) because its also about a friend of the protagonist who may be villainous and the woman who torn between her husband and her friend. It is well paced and filled with action and intrigue. World For Ransom(1954) is an exciting movie by a man who would later do terrific films like Kiss Me Deadly(1955) and The Dirty Dozen(1967).

World for Ransom (1954)

This movie is a Robert Aldrich strain. It's not quite raw enough or exotic enough to rise above its low budget, but it's not for lack of trying. One problem is several so-so actors. But the great asset is the one actor who's pushing his limits, not as a film noir lead, but as a guy lost in the shuffle around him and a little at a loss. Dan Duryea. If you don't know him, this isn't the best place to get a sense of his unique, slightly languid, nice boy, sarcastic style. He's wonderful in his own way. And he's the core of the movie.

We are in Singapore. There is an impossibly convoluted plot about hydrogen bomb secrets and a group of thugs out to steal either the secrets or the bomb itself. The chief bad guy is a little improbable, the great character actor Gene Lockhart (the judge in the classic "Miracle on 34th Street"). He's just not bad enough, or interesting enough. One of the good guys is another character actor, the peculiar and wonderful Nigel Bruce (who you might remember in Hitchcock's "Suspicion" with Cary Grant).. The lead female (Marian Carr) isn't quite a femme fatale or a steamy love interest. She's blonde, of course, and good, overall, but she isn't given much to do.

It doesn't mean much to us to know this but this is basically an extension of a television series along the same lines (same sets, same characters) starring Duryea. It has better production values, I hear (probably due to Aldrich) but it's still hampered by its formulaic television roots, for sure.

Oddly for Aldrich the camera-work is often very stable. Everything looks good, great sets and light, but it's static. And the plot keeps barreling along, adding new minor characters from the administration toward the end (just when we've had enough minor characters). There is drama, and the whole affair is slightly raw and slightly exotic. And there are steamy smokey nights and impersonations and cheesy nightclub acts and of course, the bomb, looming every so subtly.

So it's not half bad, Duryea making the most of his role. Could have been great, but a lot of little pieces are not falling into place.

"World for Ransom" is set in Singapore. A gang of crooks have just kidnapped a top nuclear scientist and have done so to auction him off to the highest bidder. Because one of the crooks is a good friend with Mike (Dan Duryea), authorities think he, too, might be involved. But Mike is a standup guy and it takes most of the film to prove he's no communist.

This film is a nice example of Dan Duryea's work as a non-supporting actor or villain...both things he was mostly known for doing. Here he's tough and well cast and the film is never dull. Believable? Perhaps not so much...but it is well worth seeing and is a nice example of Cold War cinema.

Unknown early work from Robert Aldrich, who took borrowed from so many Noir genre the private detective for a change, the plot is quite insane, a weird kidnapping of a famous nuclear scientist specialized on H-bomb, then Duryea starts searching for some clues, his former partner who have some ghost to hide, a connection with a powerful business man self-titled as investor should be a hint, the army were in charge to find out the hideout of the gang, but Dan Duryea comes first, the valuable casting as Gene Lockhart, Patrick Knowles, Nigel Bruce, Marian Carr and Douglas Drumbrille weren't able to bring the picture on high path, due so weak storyline, nevertheless has their moments, Duryea endorses that he hadn't any propensity to be a hero, more suitable for a crook's role, that was underlined many years before on those classy Noir!!!

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First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7