Decades after they came out, two mid-‘50s Glenn Ford thrillers got big budget/big star remakes. The superb 1957 Western, 3:10 TO YUMA (career bests for everyone in it; Ford, co-star Van Heflin, director Delmer Daves), got a reasonable rethink in 2007, though not a patch on the original. And, from the year before, this ersatz powerhouse, refitted for Mel Gibson’s righteous anger under Ron Howard’s megging. The whole construct in ‘57 a set up for a twisty gimmick: Ford’s rich industrialist refusing (on LIVE tv!) to pay the half mill ransom for his kidnapped son’s release, but offering all that lovely cash (covering the desk he sits behind) as reward to bring in the kidnappers dead or alive.* From the opening scenes of suburban bliss (happy family: Ford, Donna Reed, generic tousle-haired kid, over-parted Juano Hernandez & Juanita Moore as house servants) to the company boardroom; from cynical reporter Leslie Neilsen (in a GUYS AND DOLLS suit) to the cops & jeering local yokels mobbing the soundstage exteriors, the smell of dramatic mendacity is overwhelming. (No wonder Gibson & Howard jumped at the material.) And even as it manages to generate some tension toward the end (with Robert Keith as chief officer on the case, something's gonna work), the film remains manipulative trash no matter how you serve it up. And using series-tv tech hardly helps.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Kidnapped single sons must have been in the air at the time. Hitchcock’s MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH out the same year, followed a bit later by Akira Kurosawa’s masterly HIGH AND LOW/’62. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/man-who-knew-too-much-1956.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/07/tengoku-to-jigoku-high-and-low-1962.html
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ford (and later Gibson) may think he's saved some cash, but later psychiatrist bills to straighten out a kid who discovered Dad wouldn’t cough up the dough far more costly.
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