After beating a suspect to death, cop Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) is sent out of town on assignment:
In a small country community, a young girl has been murdered and the suspect is on the run.
Jim joins the girl's father (Ward Bond) in the manhunt.
Stumbling upon a farm house, the pair hole up for the night with the house's sole occupant Mary (Ida Lupino).
As the night progresses, Jim and Mary are drawn together - and Jim is forced to confront his own nature...
Before anyone asks, no, this is not a prequel to Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground.
Now that that the shit joke is out of the way, onto the movie.
Directed by Nicholas Ray (with some uncredited contributions from star Ida Lupino), On Deadly Ground feels like a companion piece to his previous movie, In A Lonely Place.
Both films are studies in masculinity, and specifically the frailties and weakness behind their rage.
Nobody is better at volcanic rage or emotional inarticulacy than Robert Ryan.
With his deep-set, blazing eyes and the whiff of suspicion from his sullen mouth, just as likely to flash into a terrifying, gnashed grin, Ryan embodied the dark side of the white American protagonist of the fifties.
What is compelling about Ryan is the vulnerability, the weakness, underpinning the monsters he plays.
What is terrifying about Wilson is how easily he gives in to his baser instincts. When a suspect lies to him in an early scene, he seems almost elated that someone has crossed him.
This relish is recalled later in a scene when he realises Mary has lied to him. As he looms over Lupino, Ryan smiles - he cannot suppress how much he delights in violent punishment, even with someone he has an emotional connection with.
Like Bogart's Dixon Steele from In A Lonely Place, Ryan's Wilson is forced to reckon with himself. Unlike Steele, Wilson seems genuinely conflicted about his own nature - particularly when he is paired with Ward Bond's father, who has been driven homicidal by the death of his child.
Unlike In A Lonely Place, Wilson chooses redemption - Wilson leaves New York to stay with Mary. The implication of this ending - and the film prior - is that Wilson's nature had been warped by his job. Or perhaps it merely gave him a licence to let his id run riot.
Or maybe this climax - so neat in its resolution - is not literal: maybe it is Wilson’s delusion of a happy ending, as he retreats back to his old stomping grounds, unable to resolve his traumas.
No comments:
Post a Comment