- Why do you make me do it? You know you're gonna talk! I'm gonna make you talk! I always make you punks talk! Why do you do it? Why?
- In my mind, there's no question that this impassioned speech, delivered by police officer Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) is the high point of Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground. It's a desperate cry of anguish from a fundamentally decent man suddenly and completely losing control of himself. Until that point, Wilson comes across merely as a lonely, taciturn cop who refuses dinner invites from his partner (Charles Kemper) because he's a bit anti-social. Once we hear him yelling, though, we come to appreciate that Wilson's silent bitterness has transformed him into an angry and dangerous man. I suppose there's a reason the novel on which this film was based is named Mad with Much Heart.
- So what's the cure for a cop who thinks of his job as little more than handling human "garbage"? A trip out of the grimy city and into a mountainous rural area may just do the trick, even if he is going to solve a young girl's murder. Once there, he meets two very different people. The girl's father, Walter Brent (Ward Bond), has allowed his thirst for revenge to turn him into a volatile, trigger-happy maniac who doesn't trust the police to catch the killer. A gentle, blind woman named Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), on the other hand, falls on the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum. As she explains to Wilson, her blindness makes it so that she has "to trust everybody." Perhaps it goes without saying that Wilson sees in these characters a contrast between the man he wants to be and the man he's slowly becoming.
- The first half of On Dangerous Ground is vintage film noir with some terrific urban location filming, a brilliant point-of-view car chase rundown of a suspect, excellent glowering by Robert Ryan, and a memorable early Bernard Herrmann score. While the music and location filming are still fine in the second half, the rest of the proceedings quickly grow too sappy for my taste. The "virtuous virgin" noir archetype has probably never been more forcefully deployed than in the character of Mary Malden, a blind woman who takes care of her mentally ill brother (Sumner Williams) while residing in a rustic cabin. It's especially galling to see Ida Lupino, a talented actress and skilled director who even took over for Nicholas Ray when he fell ill, being reduced to a character who can't do anything for herself. Apparently, the original screenplay called for Mary to reject Wilson's romantic overtures at the film's end. Now that might have been the start of something special.
- Based on the novel by A. I. Bezzerides.
- Also featuring Ed Begley and Ian Wolfe.
