Watch Appointment with Danger For Free

good back-story, and good acting

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The first must-see film of the year.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

An Alan Ladd vehicle, APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER ostensibly soups up its noir-ish template with the involvement of a virtuous nun, Sister Augustine (a guileless Phyllis Calvert), who becomes the sole witness of a foul play and whose own life is threatened henceforth. But, that précis could be misleading, what in fact is set in motion is a rote cops-and-robbers procedural, lead by the hard- boiled postal inspector Al Goddard (Ladd), infiltrating himself into a criminal clique conniving to operate a stick-up of one million dollars in transportation by the Postal Service. Yes, the film is an explicit encomium of USA's Postal Service, and at first glance, this infotainment seems to spirit us way to a new territory, the lives of postal inspectors, the covert law enforcers whom the mass knows little of, but what ensues proves that the filmmakers have no intention to burrow deeper into that front, here we are in the well-trodden path, an all-too-smart Al, outwits the crooks in a slipshod heist, saddled with an even less plausible last-minute whim of press-ganging Sister Augustine into the fold to imperil our hero. Contrary to its sub-standard action goings-on, what director Lewis Allen manages to hammer out is those alluring shots of nightly scenery, creating a taut and sinister vibe which chimes in with Film Noir's tenor. Also, at least this time, we are tantalized by a sinewy, half-naked male bod in a handball game than the usual distaff equivalent, ruling out a wimple-clad Sister Augustine, even the moll Dodie (Sterling, always a magnificent scene-stealer), intuitively knows not to meddle with lawbreakers' business and timely finds herself a fallback position.Roundly eclipsed by its more influential and well-crafted peers, like John Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950) or Kubrick's THE KILLING (1956), APPOINTMENT WITH DANGER at least offers a stage for a short-statured Ladd to emulate a straight-up, gallant daredevil of a hero with pizazz and conviction, especially when he is able to outmaneuver the murderous thug Joe Regas (Jack Webb, casting every glint with menace and intensity) every time. referential points: Lewis Allen's THE UNINVITED (1944, 6.9/10); John Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950, 7.9/10); Kubrick's THE KILLING (1956, 8.2/10).

Alan Ladd is a hard-boiled Postal Inspector sent to Gary, Indiana, voted the world's most beautiful vacation spot, to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of another postal inspector. The body's disposal by Friday and Gannon, I mean Jack Webb and Henry (Harry) Morgan, was observed by a nun, Phyllis Calvert. She's the only person who can identify one of the disposers and her life is in danger. Ladd fakes corruption and manages to join the gang responsible for the murder as they plan yet another million-dollar heist of the US Post Office.It's one of those edgy stories in which Ladd's real identity and motives might be discovered at any time by the gang. And it DOES have its tense moments when some fast and covert move by Ladd saves his skin.The endoskeleton is familiar enough from war-time spy movies, and as far as post-war gangster films are concerned it was probably done better in "Street With No Name." There's no nuance here. The bad guys are all bad. The good guys are good. Only Jan Sterling, as the moll of gang leader Paul Stewart, segues from bad to good and back without trouble. Not that she's on either side. She just doesn't care which.The opening credits imitate the post-war docudramas. A shot of the Post Office Building in Washington, majestic music, a stentorian narrator gives us some statistics and then tells us this is "the biggest business in the world." Somebody must have told the writers that FBI stories were exhausted so let's do a post office one. It's not a bad flick in any way, not an insult to the taste buds, but it's rather routine, with a couple of exceptions.One exception is the provision of panoramic shots of Gary's beautiful steel mills at a time when they were actually producing steel -- those I beams, those pillars, those cat walks, those smoke stacks, those coal cars loaded with ore, a glimpse of a fiery river of molten steel in the back projection.Another exception is the writing. While hustling out this pot boiler, the writers have managed to come up with a couple of memorable lines and one or two recherché scenes. Ladd is a pretty cold fish, rude, abrasive. A pal tells him he doesn't know what a "love affair" is. Ladd snaps back, "Sure I do. A love affair is what goes on between a man and a .45 that doesn't jam." (Okay, it's not, "What is money? Just a piece of paper crawling with germs," but it's clever.) And it has resonance too. It's not just thrown in for effect. Because in a later scene, Ladd is trying to give the nun a .45 pistol and it jams during the demonstration. She turns the present down. "Don't forget, I have a guardian angel," she says. "So do I," and Ladd pats his pistol. "Only mine doesn't jam," she observes.One more example. Ladd is stuck, bored to death, in Jan Sterling's apartment while trying to get some dish out of her. She insists on playing a record of what passes for a sultry blues number. "So that's 'Slow Bus to Memphis'", says Ladd as she weaves sinuously in front of him and he get up to dance. "Yes, can I give you a lift?" Ladd replies, "You already have," and waltzes her slowly toward the bed that's figured so prominently in the background. Fade.Ladd was always closer to delivering a performance when he had few lines, as in "Shane." Here, he tries to act but his voice acquires a sing song quality as he throws the stress here and there, almost at random, throughout the sentence. At least he looks the part. Henry (Harry) Morgan -- or Harry (Henry) Morgan or whatever it is -- stutters and is a little slow on the uptake. Jack Webb is thin and alert, a kind of human ferret, and his thoughts seem to dart ahead of the situation he finds himself. Paul Stewart is always amiable, cynical, resigned. The climax had me lost, what with the speeding cars, the kidnapped nun, the final shoot out, but it's full of action.

As a Postal Inspector, Alan Ladd investigates the murder of a fellow agent in Gary Indiana. His first job is to find the nun who witnessed the thugs moving the dead agent's body. The nun, played by Phyllis Calvert, provides the clue that leads to the identity of one of the thugs. As most reviewers have noted, it was intriguing to see Harry Morgan and Jack Webb teamed together in pre-Draget roles. Much to my surprise Webb did a good job as the psychotic killer since I've never cared much for his acting although his Dragnet parody skit on the Johnny Carson show is one of the funniest routines on television that I have ever seen. Ladd as the hard and rather cold Inspector does his usual convincing job and the supporting cast is strong (Jan Sterling does an excellent job in a relatively small but integral role) but it is Calvert who stands out. She is the counterpoint to the Ladd character's cynicism. She has one of the most interesting lines in the movie when she tells the cynical Ladd: "People don't pray to avoid death, they pray so they won't be disappointed." This movie is a keeper.

For someone who grew up in the Fifties watching Dragnet as a kid, viewing this film in the Nineties was strange: the cop-heroes of that TV show, Jack Webb and Harry Morgan, are now villains in this film!Webb played the tougher of the two characters, by far, and was effective in that role. Meanwhile, Alan Ladd played his normal good guy-tough guy role. Another odd thing about this movie is that Ladd was an agent for the U.S. Post Office, an organization - at least back then before people went "postal" - one doesn't normally think need policemen.But, as it was explained in the film, it was needed and the movie goes quickly from a corny-hokey start into a tough film noir. Phyllis Calvert adds a soft touch to the proceedings as a nun who humanizes Ladd, and helps him with the case.In all, I'm making this sound perhaps more interesting than it was, because it was okay but nothing super. Still, I'd like to see it get a DVD treatment some day and I'd consider buying it.