World for Ransom

Dan Duryea is surprisingly good in this film as something of a stranded wreck of the war making his own way as a kind of combined adventurer and private eye. His best friend is Patrick Knowles, whom he is used to bring out of troubles. Patrick is married to a night club singer, who used to be Dan Duryea's girl before he got lost in Shanghai, and she had to make a living on her own and met the even more risky adventurer Patrick Knowles. Here now he has got mixed up with some international high level crooks who have kidnapped one of the world's leading atomic physicists with the secret of the hydrogen bomb, whom they want to sell to the highest bidder, either the west or the communists. Patrick Knowles finds himself caught up in a cut-de-sac with them with no way out, but Dan Duryea still tries to bring him out. He could have succeeded.

It's an early Robert Aldrich film and definitely a promising prelude to."Kiss Me Deadly", also dealing with smuggling atomic secrets bringing no good to anyone involved, while the lasting credit of this film is the very atmospheric settings in Singapore. It's a noir indeed, but the.perennial thing about all these dark noirs is that they were all made in style. There may be any atrocities and cruelties and terrible crimes going on and being carried through, but there was a dominating style about them all that raised them above any rude and tacky baseness. You must object against the murder of an innocent here, it will sure upset you, and there are other casualties as well, but the style is already Aldrich and subtle enough, pointed out by some very poignant shots.

"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.

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.

This film is a bit lower on the production level scale than the James Bond films which were about to follow. Actually two or three levels; but this is Dan Duryea's best film. He gives a really good performance in this one.

The movie has elements of several "commie" films of the late 40s and early 50s during the Joe McCarthy and lovable Roy Cohn period. However, the British have everything well in hand here since the setting is Singapore.

The triangle among Duryea, Knowles and Marian Carr is vaguely interesting as well. Knowles and Carr are shallow and a perfect match for each other. The plot revolves around the kidnapping of a nuclear scientist in Singapore. Duryea and Knowles are working the opposite sides of the street on this one. You can probably figure out how it ends, but it is worth viewing.

Soldier of fortune Dan Duryea finds himself helping out Singapore governor Douglas Dumbrille in tracking down nuclear scientist Arthur Shields -- apparently he knows how to build a working H-bomb and always carries the pieces with him, perhaps as a party trick -- while trying to persuade chanteuse Mariann Carr to leave husband Patric Knowles.

Director Robert Aldrich apparently shot this noirish programmer in 11 days as either a film version of Duryea's "China Smith" TV show, or perhaps an attempt to change his movie image. Duryea had been around for more than a decade, a highly capable actor who seemed most notable playing weak-kneed psychopaths. Perhaps it was his resemblance to Richard Widmark, who made his movie debut playing that sort of character, and who surmounted the typecasting, that held Duryea back. Who needed another Widmark, except as a threat to keep Widmark's price down? There's little doubt that Duryea was a capable performer; sity movies and hundreds of TV apperances demonstrated that. He died in 1968, aged 61.