Customer Reviews

Try & Get Me [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Despite a catch-penny tile, "Try and Get Me" remains a truly frightening movie whose disturbing imagery lingers long after the voice-over reassurances subside. The director, Cy Endfield, was one of the lower profile victims of the Mc Carthy purges. Viewing this movie , it's easy to see why. Family man and returning vet Howard Tyler (played by the always low-key Frank Lovejoy) is recruited into a life of crime by no more than ordinary desires for the American Dream. Desperate and enemployed, he falls into the clutches of a swaggering stickup man superbly played by a preening Lloyd Bridges. (Notice how subtly Bridges bends Tyler to his will on their first meeting at the bowling alley.) Joining Bridges, Tyler finally gets the standing he desires, but the spiral he has entered dooms him and his family's share of America's promise. (Note that conspicuous among the lynch mob's vanguard are fraternity boys, true to the actual event on which the movie is based.)

Throughout, the lighting and photography effectively undermine the facile voice of reason which the producers probably felt obligated to include. Endfield may have wanted an anti-violence film, but the resulting visual landscape implies a world of endemic violence. A sense of powerlessness pervades the film, one that mere admonishments cannot overcome. As a result, the characters appear caught in some terrible metaphysical web from which there is no escape. Events march relentlessly on to a conclusion that remains one of the most harrowing in Hollywood history. This is film noir at its darkest and most frightening.

Something should be noted in passing about the compellingly exotic performance of Katherine Locke as Hazel the manicurist. Watch her facial expressions as this highly repressed plain-faced woman experiences yet one more rejection in what a paste-on smile shows to be a lifetime of rejections. Never has a blossom perched so precariously on a cheap hairdo conveyed as much lower-class longing as hers, while the car ride with a guilt-ridden Tyler could serve as tawdry inspiration for a dozen feminist tracts. What ever became of this unusual actress, I wonder.

That Endfield exiled himself to England and a conventional career with Stanley Baker, shows how much was lost among those purge victims whose disappearance, unlike many others, went generally unnoticed. Just a couple of years after the remarkable "Try and Get Me" (and Endfield's also provocative "Underworld Story"), Hollywood began sanitizing the screen with the escapism of period spectacles, technicolor westerns, and full-cleavage sex goddesses. Indeed times had changed. As Endfield already knew, the studios had to fight the Cold War too. There would be no more thought-provoking Try and Get Me's.

This film includes some classic noir story lines. The protagonist (Frank Lovejoy) is drawn into a world of petty crime when his search for a blue collar job results in despair,confusion, and rejection. Lovejoy's conscious becomes embroiled in turmoil when the values and convictions of an honest man fall short of providing security for his wife and son. Lovejoy meets a two bit hood in a bowling alley who convinces him that the workingmans' plight is a life filled with nothingness and unfulfilled dreams. They embark on a series of gas station robberies and enjoy the excitement of quick cold cash. Unbeknownest to his wife who thinks that he is working the late shift at a factory, the family settles into a temporary state of middle class bliss. But this is short lived, an eventual murder charge is brought aginst Lovejoy. The film then moves at a rapid pace, where prosecutors, newsmen, women, and victims are woven into Lovejoy's frozen conscious. Lloyd Bridges gives an indelible performance as the maniacal street hood who justifies crime as a means to achieve a higher class in an unforgiven society. The acting, camera work, lighting, and, editing is superb as the two are held and trapped in a town jail where ironically an angry mob seeks entrance and ultimate revenge. This film is a must see for noir enthusiasts. Critics argue that Richard Widmark's performance in Kiss of Death transformed the criminal figure into a warped and brutal character whose proclivity for violence was unrestrained. Lloyd Bridges's performance in Try and Get Me reaffirms this image, albeit, more convincingly.

'The Sound of Fury' (a.k.a. 'Try and Get Me') surpasses those three classics of lynch-mob terror - Lang's 'Fury', Wellman's 'The Ox-Bow Incident' and Corman's 'The Intruder' - in its savage melodramatic power; its determination to galvanise its audience; its political integrity (the journalist who influences the mob is a civilised bourgeois cosy with the corrupt elite; with the anti-hero an ex-army prole in a near-Depression small-town, with an immigrant wife), its visual sense of America, its forgotten, anonymous small towns, its bowling alleys, petrol stations, caravan camps. There is one extraordinary sequence, the equal of the bank robbery in 'Gun Crazy' (no higher praise, etc.): we watch a petrol station hold-up through the window behind the getaway driver, the camera held on Frank Lovejoy's nervy, sweaty face, the second drama playing out in miniature. The seamless move from relentless film noir to complex, undogmatic social tract is invigorating.

I was searching for this flick for a long time and finally got my hands on it. Let me just say, it was worth the effort. This noir gem stands along side Fritz Lang's "Fury" as the best presentation of mob violence on film. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but all the crucial elements of prime noir are present: exceptional lighting, imaginative framing, taunt acting and an ending that doesn't compromise. Also of note is Lloyd Bridges. He gives an outstanding performance as a slick hood with big ideas. I just wish they kept the film's original title, "The Sound of Fury." "Try and Get Me!" sounds too much like a romantic comedy. Still, this movie rocks.

The title is weak and the ending is lame with the voice over moral hitting you over the head. There is NO nuance here. Every actor has one note.

But, the first half of the film is very entertaining with cool as a cucumber hold up guy [Lloyd Bridges]corrupting weak kneed common man [Frank Lovejoy].This is a sure to lose partnership if there ever was one. Lloyd Bridges is a standout with just the right amount of swagger to make it credible.