MovieChat Forums > Boomerang! (1947) Discussion > Far too Force-Fed and Contrived to be In...

Far too Force-Fed and Contrived to be Interesting

posted 8 years ago by cultfilmfreaksdotcom
3 replies | jump to latest

A Closeup on one of the witnesses coke bottle glasses. Another closeup on the feeble old obviously insane bum as one of the culprits in the ridiculously eclectic police lineup. The expressions of the shunned waitress that screams "I'm lying and just seeking revenge." Scenes where townsfolk speak to each other which sound like a much too perfectly timed rehearsal. The politicians having a meeting while an idyllic putting green of a golf course sleeps in the background. Ed Begley pulling a gun, and thus making leading man Dana Andrews's role that much less mysterious and engrossing. Sam Levene, as usual, playing the perfectly wise "progressive" working man, who knows more than anyone with a wink, almost directed right at the audience.

Boomerang is extremely disappointing, especially since it's a movie starring Cult Film Freak Cinema's favorite actor, Dana Andrews, and directed by one of my favorite directors, Elia Kazan, who hadn't yet met Marlon Brando i.e hit his stride, and became more subtle, and implied.

Idealistic is an understatement for this contrived Film Noir that's hardly a Film Noir. And that's the word to center on... The one connected to Under... Which is, Statement. This movie is not only making one, it's screaming like a wounded and abused banshee.

This is why Dana's usual director, Otto Preminger, hit it outta the ballpark with his masterpiece Anatomy of a Murder, by having all the characters ambiguous, and, unlike Boomerang, remaining realistic without having heroes and villains. Such characters should never be anywhere near a Courtroom Drama.

Anyhow: Dana Andrews did a good job and stayed tried and true despite starring in a movie that not only made up its mind from the start, but takes sides, one side... One-Sided... Ugh!

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[–] momur (107) 3 years ago

I mean...I feel like a lot of your complaints ultimately come down to the fact that this was a film heavily based on a real murder case which was never solved, plus the semi-documentary style that the film was engaging in. From what I can remember, a lot of the events presented in the trial and investigation (except for the whole blackmail subplot) aren't actually too far off the mark from what apparently did happen during the real case so if the events seem contrived or idealistic... Well, just occasionally life is exactly that. An "easy target" of a man was falsely accused of murdering a priest, he was identified by several witnesses who saw the killing take place, the police used what are now recognised as underhanded methods (at best) to obtain a signed confession from the man, the prosecutor did believe the man to be innocent after examining the evidence, the prosecutor did provide enough of a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the man, and the man did ultimately walk free. The accused and the prosecutor apparently even remained life-long friends afterwards. The film had "made up its mind and taken sides" from the start because it sort of had to, aiming to be an almost blow-by-blow account of something that actually happened. That's like complaining that films about WW2 "make up their minds" from the start that the Allies win and the Nazis are the bad guys. It kind of goes with the territory of being heavily based on a real event.

It's also probably worth noting that a lot of the background townsfolk, including those who played the main witnesses (excluding the waitress), weren't actors but were, well, ordinary townsfolk. As I said, with the exception of the waitress and one of the witnesses whom Andrews points out during the trial as having a light fedora hat and black coat who was Elia Kazan's father if I'm not mistaken. So if their line readings come off as a little stilted or rehearsed, that's why. And Kazan specifically wanted it that way.

[–] SickSpazmoid (706) a year ago

I have to agree with the cult film freak. They did poor dramatization. The lamest part is that from the beginning they wrote in there a guy whose only role is to remind us that they arrested the wrong person. The attempt to add credibility by a narrator feels flat and it breaks the immersion. The court room sequence is good, but apparently the attorney's team did hell of a job which we could not witness. Instead, for like 20 or so minutes we watch helpless cops scrambling to find a suspect. In essence they really fucked up the "procedural" part of the movie. And yeah, Ed Begley's character is acting stupid.

But, I must say that the cast is good, liked the shocking opening and the closing courtroom "procedural", albeit rushed, as I already mentioned.

6.5/10

[–] momur (107) 8 months ago

"The lamest part is that from the beginning they wrote in there a guy whose only role is to remind us that they arrested the wrong person."
To be fair, that wasn't strictly their fault; that's down to a condition of the Hays Code that crime couldn't be seen to go unpunished. Since the entire main plot hinges on Arthur Kennedy's character presumably being innocent, they had to come up with something else. Hence the weird guy who is hinted to be the real murderer and is dealt with in the end. It's hokey now (and you can kind of tell it's not something they necessarily wanted at the time either) but, like with most things of this type in films of this era, there's no real way it could have been avoided.

"The attempt to add credibility by a narrator feels flat and it breaks the immersion."
That's kind of just a product of it being a docu-noir movie. And one can take or leave docu-noir as a style, but you're also going to have to accept there are certain narrative and dramatic techniques that come with it. Like if you go to see a musical, you need to just accept that characters will start singing because...that's how musicals work. I agree it was a mistake to add the narrator's voiceover in the middle of the film, but practically all films of that style have a narrator at least at the beginning and/or at the end.

Everything else, I kind of agree with. I don't think the blackmail plot with Ed Begley was necessary - it was enough that no one but Andrews' character believed the suspect was innocent and was facing political pressure to prosecute him. My guess is that it was just assumed that on its own, that wasn't dramatic enough. Plus the film really does take too long to really get going. But I feel it's worth noting we're looking at this through the eyes of modern cinema and its approach to storytelling which is, on the whole, vastly different than the 1940s docu-noir style this movie was going for. Taken for what it is, it's a very good movie