The Narrow Margin (1952)'s comments

Do you want to let us know what you think? Just login, after which you will be redirected back here and you can leave your comments.

boulderman

Tight but thin-ish. Enjoyed the pace, theme, setting, dialogue and acting, there were some decent plot points. 7/10 film noir is one of my favourite genres, The Big Heat my favourite.

4 years 10 months ago

The Narrow Margin starts out with stock noir characters and at an efficient 72 minutes, doesn't allow them to stray very far off type, but there are a couple twists on the premise of a copper keeping a witness alive during a long train ride that make it worth one's while. But more than that, director Richard Fleischer crafts a surprisingly modern-looking film, not at all what you'd expect in 1952, with a more than usually claustrophobic train, and a dynamic, often hand-held camera that keeps us tight in the action. Most older train movies obviously take out walls so they can shoot the story comfortably, and so they look comfortable. Definitely not the case here, and it raises the tension considerably. It helps that the villains are a good match for the protagonist, and that the cat and mouse game is filled with the believable obstacles stemming from the well-realized environment.

5 years 4 months ago