Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 20-November-11
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Nightfall (1957)

The thriller Nightfall rests on the premise that the truth can be odder and more complex than appearances would suggest. The story opens on a man (Aldo Ray) hovering around a newsstand which contains papers identifying him as a criminal. Heading into a bar, he introduces himself as "Jim Vanning" to a lonely model named Marie (Anne Bancroft). She pegs him as a solid guy who's in some kind of trouble, and the nature of his trouble begins to emerge as soon as she starts to fall for him. In addition to an undercover investigator for an insurance company (James Gregory), Jim is being pursued by a pair of tough guys who emit a good cop/bad cop vibe but are clearly not cops. The leader is a cool, no-nonsense type (Brian Keith) and his sidekick is an enthusiastic sociopath (Rudy Bond). It seems they knew Jim as "Rayburn" in the past and think he has 350,000 dollars stashed somewhere. They plan to collect the money by appealing to his common sense or by torturing him, whichever works best.

Despite the warning bells that go off in her head, Marie allows Jim to pull her into his dangerous life. (Considering the actor's gruff affability, this is not surprising.) As they flee his pursuers, he recounts the adventure that landed him in his mess. It involves a series of unlikely situations which aren't so unlikely they couldn't have happened. Their gradual unfolding keeps the movie interesting. On a camping trip in Wyoming the previous year, Jim and a friend happened to meet the two tough guys as they were making a getaway from a bank robbery. One brutal killing and strange twist later, Jim found himself stumbling across a snowy mountain with the robbers' loot, which he dropped in the excitement of escape. He knew the evidence would suggest his culpability and has lived incognito ever since. Now he wants to find the stolen money as much as the bad guys do, since returning it would help clear his name.

The threads of Jim's story come together in Moose, Wyoming, where the insurance investigator catches up with him first. Being a details man, he has seen beyond the obvious explanations which the papers have published and is willing to believe Jim's explanation. He tags along to the mountain where the robbers stage a showdown. This entails psychological conflict and grisly justice that might be taken for luck — or, it might just be a fitting end to Jim's tortuous adventure.

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