While Rumell gets used to running the ship, conspiratorial crew members Scott (Broderick Crawford) and Leroy (Stuart Whitman) are planning to kill the crew, sink the ship and collect a reward for the salvage.
As the ship gets underway, crew members start dropping dead. Will Rumell figure it out before it is too late?
I watched this movie for free on Youtube. At first I thought I had stumbled on a hidden gem: James Mason? Dorothy Dandridge? Broderick Crawford? In a murder mystery at sea?
And the title made it sound awesome.
Sadly, this movie takes the set up, the cast, some fun ideas for sequences and does almost nothing with any of them.
We know the villain's plan almost from the beginning, so there is no mystery. With this knowledge, one would then expect the movie to emphasise the suspense of our heroes trying to figure out what the villains up to, as the bodies pile up.
Nope.
The whole movie lies there - Stone shoots scenes largely in well-lit master shots, ruining any sense of atmosphere.
The sequence of the villains stalking the unsuspecting crew members in the engine room is incredibly stilted. Stone has no feeling for how to lay out the geography of the environment, nor how to block the action to create tension as the villains kill their victims. There is not even any chiaroscuro.
And while it is obvious that Stone is aiming for some kind of 'realism', he completely fails to create a sense of verisimilitude and bring the viewer into this environment. This is an engine room - noisy, smelly and dirty. The way Stone shoots it, it comes across like one of those showpiece ships they run tours of at naval museums.
The acting is solid, but the script gives nothing for the cast to do - there is a vague theme class in the relationship between the urbane Rumell and the crew, but that is never brought to the fore.
The movie only comes alive toward the climax, when Crawford, armed with a high-powered rifle, has the crew cornered in the mess hall.
The crew are allowed to escape on a lifeboat, but unknown to them Crawford plans to turn the ship around and sink their tiny vessel. Rumell swims back to the ship and sneaks aboard, where the cook's wife (Dandridge) uses her wiles to foil the villains' plan and give the captain the upper hand.
This finale is kind of fun, but probably because it is the only time in this movie where it feels like the story is going somewhere.
The acting is solid, but the characters are either types or baffling. It is hard to tell exactly what the script wants Rumell to be - is he an intellectual? Is he too green? While the finale would make you think Rumell is discovering his mojo and proving himself to the crew, he never really has a moment of failure to justify his redemption.
The one moment that is kind of interesting is when Dandridge takes it on herself to help Rumell by disarming Leroy (Stuart Whitman), Scott's flunky. Until this point, she has been an exotic object for the camera and Rumell, who brings it up when she arrives onboard with her husband (who conveniently decides to fight a gunman with a throwing knife and fails). It is a neat sequence, but it is built on nothing.
It is especially frustrating because the moving parts in this sequence are there. On paper, the idea of a hero having to swim back to a ship and overpower a gunman before the ship reaches his crew-mates' boat sounds awesome - you have a ticking clock and plenty of obstacles to turn out a real slam dunk of ending. Sadly, it never comes alive.
And the title made it sound awesome.
Sadly, this movie takes the set up, the cast, some fun ideas for sequences and does almost nothing with any of them.
We know the villain's plan almost from the beginning, so there is no mystery. With this knowledge, one would then expect the movie to emphasise the suspense of our heroes trying to figure out what the villains up to, as the bodies pile up.
Nope.
The whole movie lies there - Stone shoots scenes largely in well-lit master shots, ruining any sense of atmosphere.
The sequence of the villains stalking the unsuspecting crew members in the engine room is incredibly stilted. Stone has no feeling for how to lay out the geography of the environment, nor how to block the action to create tension as the villains kill their victims. There is not even any chiaroscuro.
And while it is obvious that Stone is aiming for some kind of 'realism', he completely fails to create a sense of verisimilitude and bring the viewer into this environment. This is an engine room - noisy, smelly and dirty. The way Stone shoots it, it comes across like one of those showpiece ships they run tours of at naval museums.
The acting is solid, but the script gives nothing for the cast to do - there is a vague theme class in the relationship between the urbane Rumell and the crew, but that is never brought to the fore.
The movie only comes alive toward the climax, when Crawford, armed with a high-powered rifle, has the crew cornered in the mess hall.
The crew are allowed to escape on a lifeboat, but unknown to them Crawford plans to turn the ship around and sink their tiny vessel. Rumell swims back to the ship and sneaks aboard, where the cook's wife (Dandridge) uses her wiles to foil the villains' plan and give the captain the upper hand.
This finale is kind of fun, but probably because it is the only time in this movie where it feels like the story is going somewhere.
The acting is solid, but the characters are either types or baffling. It is hard to tell exactly what the script wants Rumell to be - is he an intellectual? Is he too green? While the finale would make you think Rumell is discovering his mojo and proving himself to the crew, he never really has a moment of failure to justify his redemption.
The one moment that is kind of interesting is when Dandridge takes it on herself to help Rumell by disarming Leroy (Stuart Whitman), Scott's flunky. Until this point, she has been an exotic object for the camera and Rumell, who brings it up when she arrives onboard with her husband (who conveniently decides to fight a gunman with a throwing knife and fails). It is a neat sequence, but it is built on nothing.
It is especially frustrating because the moving parts in this sequence are there. On paper, the idea of a hero having to swim back to a ship and overpower a gunman before the ship reaches his crew-mates' boat sounds awesome - you have a ticking clock and plenty of obstacles to turn out a real slam dunk of ending. Sadly, it never comes alive.
The Decks Ran Red is the textbook definition of a movie crying out for a remake. With better direction and a fleshed-out script, it could be a fun potboiler.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
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