Negative Positive
Title: a Widmark disappointment
Review: I love Richard Widmark as an actor, but in this film he was just plain awful, particularly in the interview scene with Sidney Poitier. Martin Balsam's character is either irrelevant or woefully underdeveloped; the obvious attempt to parallel his efforts to overcome his past with those of Widmark's Captain Finlander--an attempt, I assume, to highlight Finlander's hypocrisy--are shallow at best. Some films work in unrefined form, but a political thriller, particulalry of Cold War vintage, cannot pull it off, and this one doesn't.
Is the review positive or negative? 