The Rabbit Trap

Ernest Borginine superb acting is on display here, playing an average joe far removed from his usual sadistic heavies or his broad comic McHale's Navy character.

The story completely misses the point that in forgetting the rabbit trap, it is Eddie who has the problem and wants to make it his bosses problem.

Private companies are not like governments. They are not in business to provide jobs for people and they are not run by bosses who enjoy making life miserable for their employees. Unlike government departments, they have competitors and if they don't do it better and or cheaper, they lose market share and eventually go out of business. Despite popular belief going back to Charles Dickens, a company boss/owner only cares about the bottom line not out of evil, but because the bottom line dictates whether or not the entire company survives.

Lets see it from a different angle. What if it was the boss who'd forgotten the rabbit trap and decided to take time off his job to go back for it. What if as a result a crucial decision was not made and the company went out of business? Should the entire company suffer for the bosses personal problems? What if Eddie was your brain surgeon. Would it be OK with you if he got someone else to fill in for him or delayed your surgery to go back for a rabbit trap that he forgot?

A family that just has started their vacation, must return home because the father (Ernest Borgnine) is required by his boss. When they arrive, realize that they forgotten a harmless rabbit trap ready. Because of the insistence of his son, he try to convince his boss to let him go to the vacation spot to check whether any rabbit has been caught, and so release him from a slow death agony. He must choose between his job, or give a good example of compassion and love to all creatures to his son. The Ernest Borgnine acting is at his best. I love this film.

Adapted from a '50s TV drama, this United Artists release stars Ernest Borgnine, at the height of his Everyman abilities, as a family man torn between home and work responsibilities. His boss (David Brian, good) is a slave driver who knows how to exploit his cooperativeness, and his wife (Bethel Leslie, also good) keeps talking sense to him, knowing he's disinclined to listen. When he's called back to work prematurely from vacation and forgets to dismantle the rabbit trap he and his young son set up, the son worries about the suffering rabbit and tries to travel back to the lake on his own. Yes, the movie's really that small. There's a subplot about a va-va-voom but nice secretary who's having an affair with the boss and feels guilty about it, and there's a happy ending that really isn't very happy. And there's annoying, TV-sounding music throughout, and some dull shots of L.A. and environs in 1958. It's well intentioned and reasonably well executed, but also prosaic and up to its neck in the Everyday Problems of Normal People. That's generally not a recipe for exciting cinema.

Ernest Borgnine is excellent as a husband and father whose long-awaited camping vacation with his family is cut short after his boss orders his return to the office; Borgnine's little boy is upset they left a rabbit trap behind, and is angry with his father for not caring about the potential death of an animal versus the demands of his job. Screenwriter J.P. Miller, adapting his 1955 teleplay, broadcast as part of the Goodyear Playhouse, is a bit too obvious drawing out the parallels between the man's position at work and the caged rabbit; but, even as the symbolism is beaten to a pulp, the star's performance carries the material. This project was clearly meant to get Borgnine back on "Marty" territory; while "The Rabbit Trap" isn't nearly as rich in personality as that film, it certainly has its heart in the right place, and Borgnine's confrontation scene with his hard-nosed boss is pretty powerful. ** from ****

A family goes on vacation when the father's boss calls and wants him to come back early. Hoping this is his chance at promotion, he does. But they forgot that a rabbit trap was set and the son now worries about the fate of any rabbit caught in it.

It is nice to see a young Ernest Borgnine. He somehow looks less goony. And he makes a nice father, even if the "Nevada Slim" reference is lost on me.

The film is very sentimental and touts family values as being more important than work. It is a tough film if you look at it realistically, because of course to have a functional family, you need to have some sort of income. But the message is still important if not taken too seriously, and the film could have gotten more sentimental than it did (for example, if the boss took Borgnine's side), and I am glad it did not.