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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

BROKEN LANCE (1954)

Megger Edward Dmytryk went from big-bang-for-little-bucks genre pics to little-bang-for-big-bucks prestige productions. But he’s no paradigm of the classic Hollywood career arc since he served a brief jail term during the height of the Commie Witch Hunt days just as he was moving on to those ‘bigger’ things. No wonder he bought into Hollywood’s caste system. This one’s from his big prestige days (alas) and it weighs a ton. A cast that looks good on paper (Spencer Tracy plays irascible cattle baron dad to Robert Wagner, Richard Widmark, Hugh O’Brian & Earl Holliman; plus Katy Jurado, E. G. Marshall & Jean Peters) doesn’t have enough to do. Widmark manages to work up an intriguing characterization, but this Westernized version of the infinitely superior HOUSE OF STRANGERS/’49 only proves what a poor substitute bulls are for banks.

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