Wonderful Movie

Sorry, this movie sucks

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Reading the plot description, this one sounds like an updated version of "Petrified Forest". the opening two minutes looks like it was filmed near the mountains and deserts of palm springs. and everyone is so forthcoming with the exact location, time, and details of the atom bomb test. ah the good ol days. The first of only SIX films that Powell directed himself. Simple enough plot... gang holds group hostage, although this film has the added suspense of an impending bomb test right where they are hiding out. Lots of banter about not being heroes... a bit of "Key Largo" thrown in. It's not bad, but you'd think he wouldn't want to hang out in a location with all the feds (and a bomb test) nearby. Intentionally or not, Dottie (Jan Sterling) looks and sounds like Lana Turner, another Dick Powell connection... kind of. They starred together in "Postman". Eh. Not great. Never really gets going. 900 votes on Turner Classic, so they must not show this one very much.

SPLIT SECOND is a tough crime thriller from the early 1950s with an absolutely fantastic premise: a group of characters are taken hostage by some desperate convicts who've broken out of prison and will do anything to get away. The problem? They're holed up in a ghost town in the desert which will shortly be obliterated when a nuclear bomb test takes effect.I can't think of a better premise for tension building, so it's a shame that the suspense in this story is only so-so; former actor Dick Powell certainly knows how to shoot a good scene or two (there are some excellent brutal fights here) but the film lacks something overall. I think the music could have been a lot better in building suspense because it's all surprisingly subtle.Still, there's plenty to like here, not least the performances. Stephen McNally was a popular movie heavy and his murderous character burns up the screen. The rest of the performers are well judged, from the sinister mute villain to the crusading reporter hero and the cheating spouse. The nuclear ending doesn't disappoint; it's a neat precursor to the '80s wave of nuclear blast dramas.

The genre of film-noir can be divided into three eras - generally speaking: the classic era (1940-1945), the postwar era (1945-1953) and the Cold War era (1953-1958-60?). Film-noir was always a genre about fear, moral complexity and desperation. When the WWII film-noir exuded postwar disillusions; the concrete war was over but it was still going on on social level: in our minds and in the society. What genre would fit more perfectly to the ages of paranoia and fear than the genre of them, film-noir. To my mind Split Second is the first Cold War film-noir - a statement which one could argue about because in the same year 1953 Samuel Fuller made a film-noir about paranoia and the fear of communism Pickup on South Street (1953).Dick Powell was the star of the Hollywood musicals in 1930's. In 1940's he tried to change his image from a singing dancer to the new bad boy of Hollywood. In 1944 Edward Dmytryk directed Murder, My Sweet based on a novel by Raymond Chandler and casted Dick Powell to play Philip Marlowe - the greatest private eye of film-noir, but the performance by Powell is often left in the shadows of Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe interpretation in The Big Sleep (1946). After the war Dick Powell had some experience from film-noir and he chose to try directing as well. Split Second was his debut of the six films he directed and I think he succeed quite well in it.1950's was the age when the government of the United States made a lot of nuclear weapon experiments: in the deserts of US and in the famous Bikini island. This offered a chance to make a thriller around these kind of events and Split Second represents the attempt of transforming film-noir from its usual big city milieus to a deserted town in Nevada under the fear of the war. Three men have just escaped from prison, unaware of the nuclear experiments of the government. Soon the group of three takes a few hostages in result of getting a doctor because one of the escapees is injured. As time goes on in the deserted town the hostages start to lose their morality and the time before the explosion is running out.The aesthetics of film-noir were often related to big cities like New York or Los Angeles and exotic milieus were always part of the genre but usually they meant bars in Chinatown, motels of Arabia or the cold streets of Shanghai. In 1950's many tried to transform film-noir to new milieus: to snowy conditions (On Dangerous Ground), to the narrow halls of a train (The Narrow Margin) and to the back seats of a car (The Hitch-Hiker). To me Split Second represents the attempt of transforming film-noir to deserted towns, which The Hitch-Hiker (1953) did as well, but Split Second also tried to bring film-noir to the Atomic Age.There's no question whether this is a high quality noir or a B-class film. The latter can be seen in its conventional direction, low budget and it has got a great number of unknown actors. But the way I see it Split Second is alongside with all the b-class Mitchum films one of the bests. It's a great example of Cold War films and how the Atomic Age affected cinema. It's an entertaining thriller but also a fine survey of the disappearance of morality.

Two men, Steven McNally and Paul Kelly, the latter with a bullet in him, escape from prison and are picked up by their associate known as "Dummy". The plan is to hide out overnight in a desert ghost town, then pick up a quarter of a million dollars stashed away somewhere and run off to a tropical beach. Kelly won't be able to make it without medical attention. He's been pretty badly shot up.The three miscreants pull their stolen car into a remote gas station, murder the proprietor, and hijack the next car that pulls in, along with its two occupants, the adulteress Alexis Smith and her insurance-salesman boy friend on their way to Reno.Now a party of five, they run out of gas, flag down the next car that comes along, and hijack the car and ITS two passengers, reporter Keith Andes and his newly found friend, nihilarian Jan Sterling.They turn off the main road and hunker down in a bleak and dilapidated village where they take the sole resident, prospector Arthur Hunnicutt captive as well. Smith's husband, Richard Egan, is a doctor back in Los Angeles. Before leaving the highway, McNally rang him up, told him the situation, and threatened to kill Smith if Egan didn't immediately fly to Las Vegan, rent a car, and join them at the ghost town in order to treat the wounded Paul Kelly.So now -- I hope you're following this -- there are three criminals holding a diverse group of six people hostage. The village in which they are ensconced is about to be vaporized by an atomic bomb explosion at six the next morning. Everyone knows about it, and they react with different degrees and modalities of anxiety.That's basically the set up. The drama works itself out in the broken-down, dusty bar room. The social dynamics resemble those of "The Desperate Hours." The overall structure is more like that of "The Petrified Forest." The thermonuclear device is added as lagniappe, reminding us of lines from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The City in the Sea" -- "While from a proud tower beyond the town, Death looks gigantically down." McNally plays it tough. He shoots and kills the insurance salesman for challenging McNally's manhood as McNally takes the terrified Alexis Smith into the kitchen "to make coffee" and closes the door behind them. But McNally has a soft spot too -- for the suffering Paul Kelly, lying there with a hole in his belly.There are a good number of other dramatic incidents (well photographed by Nicholas Musuraca, who knows his way around a noir setting). McNally gets to beat hell out of reporter Andes and sluttish Jan Sterling. He pistol whips the grizzled Arthur Hunnicutt. He extorts a sexual favor out of Alexis Smith -- who looks just fine, by the way.The ending has a car hurtling around the dusty roads like a rat trying to escape a cat, a few minutes before the blast. For the survivors -- all of them worthy citizens -- there is a deus ex mine shaft.The situation generates a good deal of tension. The performances are up to professional standards. The direction -- Dick Powell's initial effort -- is functional if not memorable in any way. None of the characters is given any complexity, with the possible exception of McNally and his concern for his wounded partner ("the only friend I ever had") and, surprisingly, the insurance salesman who should have been painted as a gutless lounge lizard but instead heroically puts his life at risk to save the honor of Alexis Smith. It's a mistake on his part because he loses the bet, and Smith, it turns out, isn't worth it anyway. The salesman's dead body lies outside, and there are a couple of half-joking references to it. "Keep that up and you'll be shaking hands with Ashley." It's too modest to be a masterpiece, but I enjoyed it from beginning to end.