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Anthony Mann’s Desperate features an innocent newlywed couple caught up in a wild noir adventure that has them fleeing to a farm, stealing cars, running from cops, running from gangsters, and donning circus masks. Steve Randall (Steve Brodie) is a trucker for hire who’s forced by the mob to either haul illegal goods or take a bullet in the head (the forced transport theme is not uncommon in noir — see, for example, 1948’s Kiss the Blood Off My Hands and 1950’s The Breaking Point ) so he risks his life to escape his kidnappers, a melee that results in a dead cop for which Steve is framed, and scoops up his beloved, pregnant wife Anne (Audrey Long) so they can get out of town. Just about every visual touch for which Mann is famous is on display here: a classic gangster headquarters with swirling smoke and swinging overhead lights; a police office striped by light through window blinds; tense, climactic close-ups while a ticking clock anticipates a potentially lethal confrontation. Raymond Burr plays the perfect crime boss, Walt Radak, flanked by thugs and destined for an over-the-top demise; the final sequence on a darkened tenement staircase is right out of a noir textbook.
