Raw Deal

A brutal prison escape film centered on a love triangle, Anthony Mann’s Raw Deal is original, dream-like, and thoroughly entertaining. Once again teaming with cinematographer John Alton, Mann here is at the peak of his cinematic skills, combining dramatic studio sets (including vast pine forests) with a hazy voice-over and a host of visual techniques spanning aerial shots, extreme close-ups, deep focus, thick fog, and low angles. Dennis O’Keefe is excellent as Joe Sullivan, a wrongly convicted prisoner who escapes with the help of his associate, sadistic mob boss Rick Coyle (Raymond Burr, often shot from below for maximum menace), who owes Joe $50,000 but assumes Joe will die during the escape attempt. Thanks largely to the aid of his devoted girl Pat Regan (Claire Trevor), Joe makes it out alive, which will ultimately necessitate Coyle siccing his henchman Fantail (John Ireland) to hunt Joe down and eliminate him. Joe and Pat seek shelter at the home of his legal caseworker, Ann Martin (Marsha Hunt), who has been visiting Joe in prison largely because she has a crush on him, but when the police surround her apartment, Joe forces Ann to escape along with them. Now on the run from both the police and Coyle’s thugs, Joe and his female companions must also contend with competitive romantic feelings, which will come to a head when Pat is called on to save Ann’s life (or not). Every scene is dramatically rich (the car swap on a deserted road, the extended tackle shop fight, the campfire in the mountains), but the final fifteen minutes, beginning just before Joe and Pat’s seafaring departure, are a mini masterpiece on their own: ominous music, fog as thick as soup, a ticking clock, a wild conflagration, and a tragic goodbye.