A Disappointing Continuation

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

All aboard for cheesy sets and a lot of unconvincing talk, talk, talk with the usual stock characters and stock situations.James Whitmore, badly miscast, is a dead weight. Cassavetes is all sub-Brando method acting, but Sal Mineo is bit more with-it than usual.Nonetheless, the only really impressive performance is offered by Mark Rydell. On the negative side, production values are extremely crummy. Don Siegel, Sam Leavit, amd Franz Waxman should hang their heads in shame for respectively contributing such uninspired direction, plodding photography, and a pedestrian music score.And as for art director Serge Kriznan, he should be drummed out of town. Or maybe the shabby sets were entirely the fault of penny-pinching producer Vincent M. Fennelly?

Crime in the Streets is directed by Don Siegel and written by Reginald Rose. It stars John Cassavetes, James Whitmore, Sal Mineo, Mark Rydell, Virginia Gregg, Peter J. Votrian, Will Kuluva and Malcolm Atterbury. Music is scored by Franz Waxman and cinematography by Sam Leavitt.Social worker Ben Wagner (Whitmore) tries to help local slum gang, The Hornets, especially their troubled leader Frankie Dane (Cassavetes).When your body hits that sidewalk nobody will even turn around to look at yah.Decent "juve delinquent" lecture movie, Crime in the Streets boasts some mightily impressive performances and closes on a (expected) piece of dramatic worth, but the screenplay is staid and pic is claustrophobic for all the wrong reasons. There's a cramped cheapness to the production that doesn't suit the narrative and you can feel Siegel straining with every sinew to light a tinderbox with a damp match. However, Cassavetes' intense firecracker performance is worth the time of any classic era film fan, and with Whitmore doing good and controlled earnest and Gregg (sadly underused) tugging away at the maternal heart strings, it still comes out in credit. There's a bonus, too, in the form of Waxman's blending of stabby jazz shards with momentum building percussion, it's quality, even if ultimately it deserves a better movie. 6/10

The script is by Reginald Rose who went on to write the original "Twelve Angry Men", a superb piece of formulaic writing, directed by Sidney Lumet, centering on the members of the jury in a murder case. Don Siegel directed "Crime in the Streets". He was to become a master of brutal crime thrillers. John Cassavetes is the lead and James Whitmore and Sal Mineo are in support. The score is by Hollywood pro Franz Waxman. Even Sam Pekinpah gets a screen credit, though under an altered name.Yet everything about this story of a gang of 1950s delinquents seems mediocre -- dated, talky, preachy, and overdone.The director of Rose's "Twelve Angry Men" set the story in a closed jury room and never tried opening it up. The sense of heat and claustrophobia increased with time -- possibly because the director, Lumet, actually had the walls moved closer together, making the room literally smaller. Here we are only too painfully aware that we're looking at a studio set that's maybe thirty yards long. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, as Lumet's film showed, not to mention "A Streetcar Named Desire." But in those instances the sense of uncomfortable closeness, of sweaty crowding, was thematically related to the story. Claustrophobia is about the last thing we think of when we imagine the streets of a city, even in the more decrepit neighborhoods.And in "Twelve Angry Men," Rose laid out a taut story line. A kid's life was put at risk in the opening scene. The conversations that followed were ABOUT something, and even when they were about nothing more important than the weather they managed to capture the interactional styles of ordinary working-class people as well as a feeling for place -- New York City on a hot summer day.There's no such feeling for location here. No reference to places or streets, no regional dialects. It could be taking place anywhere and it feels a little barren because of that. Actually a couple of important characters were from New York but you'd never know it. Pekinpah is credited as "dialog coach," but what Pekinpah, a native of California's central valley, would know about dialects is left to our imagination.There are a couple of good performances. James Whitmore is always reliable, and John Cassavetes gets to bring his method intensity to the part of a half-crazed delinquent. Virginia Gregg, as Cassavetes' mother, is fine, but then hers is a well-written role. Sal Mineo has a genuine following. I realize that. But his charm almost completely eludes me. I hate to say it but he always reminded me of a thin, pitiful, blubbering child. Nothing in any of his performances ever really shook that impression.The topic is terribly dated too. Almost all sociology departments used to offer classes in juvenile delinquency but the topic has disappeared from the curriculum. I don't know why. Of course, the fact that a subject is time-bound doesn't necessarily mean it has to be poorly done or that it's irrelevant. I mean, "Moby Dick" is about whaling.Anyway, the film isn't terrible. I just found it uninteresting.

**SPOILERS** After having a nighttime rumble by the docks with rival street gang the Dukes the butt kicking Hornets put them to flight and capture one of their gang members who they signal out for special treatment. Eariler in the week Hornet member Lenny the "Lip" was worked over by the Duke's when he entered their turf and got his nose broken for doing it. Now Lenny and his boys were going to do the same thing to the captured Duke street gang member.It was too bad for Lenny that concerned citizen Mr. Mcallister caught him in the act of pulling a zip-gun and reported Lenny to the police. With Lenny under arrest and facing at least a year behind bars for the violation of the NY State Sullivan Law, carrying a gun without a permit, the Hornets gang leader Frankie "Touchy" Dane is as mad as a hornet at Mr. Mcallister and plans to off him when the opportunity presents itself to him. Together with his two fellow gang members Angelo "Baby" Gioia and Lou "Crazy Louie" Macklin Frankie plans to do in Mr. Mcallister the very next evening when he comes home from his weekly bowling game. The trouble with Frankie's crackpot plan is that he has a habit of opening his big mouth in public and by doing that lets the cat out of the bag in what he together with Baby Angelo and Crazy Louie are planning to do! And this comes to the attention of neighborhood social worker Ben Wagner through Frankie's kid brother Richie who overheard his plan and wants to keep him from carrying it out. As well as, if he succeeds, prevent his big brother Frankie from ending up being strapped into Sing Sing's electric chair!Following the success of troubled teenage movies like "The Blackboard Jungle" and "Rebel Without a Cause" the previous year it was a given that they'll be followed with a film like "Crime in the Streets" that actually preceded, on TV, both of them. Even though he was a bit old, at age 27, to play an 18 year old John Cassavetes was very convincing as the misguided and troubled Frankie Dane. A person who hated being touched, even by his mother, but loved to touch, with brass knuckles tire irons and switchblades, those who get in his way. There's also the sensitive and confused Angelo Baby Giola played by 16 year old Sal Mineo. Baby is torn between his pop who owns the neighborhood malt shop & candy store, in him wanting Baby to make something of himself, and his membership in Frankie's gang the Hornets which is a one way ticket to the state penitentiary. Trying to please both his dad and Frankie cause Baby to suffer from deep guilt problems. But when it comes to do in Mr. Macllister the poor kid reaches his breaking point!***SPOILERS*** As for Crazy Louie, played by Mark Rydell, he's by far the craziest of the bunch in having no morals at all in murdering someone which even the not so stable Frankie, who planned Mr. Macllister's murder, later has second thought about! The real heroes in the movie is Frankie's kid brother Richie, Peter J. Votrian, and social worker Ben Wagner, James Whitmore, who in the end put Frankie straight in seeing that his hatred for the world at large, in putting him in the mess that he finds himself in, was more of his own making and one one else's! And it was Frankie and Frankie alone who by becoming a normal and sensitive person in him being able to feel the pain of others, instead of inflicting pain on them, that will help him overcome his very severe and dangerous inferiority complex!