The Young Savages, from 1961, is a crime-drama starring Burt Lancaster, with Dina Merrill and Shelley Winters taking on supporting roles. It's kind of a social message movie, in that it deals with the issue of juvenile delinquency and ethnic gang violence.
Action in the film begins immediately, as three teenage gang members approach a rival gangmember and stab him to death. Since there were several eyewitnesses to the killing, the boys are quickly apprehended by the police and taken into custody. They claim the killing was self-defense...that the victim had pulled a knife on them. However, since the victim was blind, their story is not believed; add to that, with the victim being Puerto Rican and the suspects being Italian, it is believed that the killing was motivated solely by ethnic hatred.
Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster) is the attorney prosecuting the case, and his idea is to go for first degree murder. Having grown up in the Italian neighborhood of the suspects, Hank soon discovers that one of the boys is the son of his former girlfriend, Mary DiPace (Shelley Winters), and Mary is absolutely convinced that her son, Danny, did not kill anyone. She begs Hank to look for evidence that would prove Danny's innocence. Now Hank is between a rock and a hard place, because the victim's neighborhood expects a conviction, as does the D.A. For Hank to discover evidence revealing Danny didn't do it would further ignite the tensions that already exist between the two gangs...but all Hank wants is the truth.
So what is the truth? Did the blind youth really pull a knife on the three young men? Or are they just making that story up? Is Danny innocent? These are the questions that play out in the balance of the film.
The Young Savages is an interesting, hard-hitting drama, which, as I said, gets the action going immediately. There is certainly no boredom in this film, which is available on DVD, as part of the John Frankenheimer Collection. Incidentally, just to make clear, if you read the brief synopsis of this film on TCM, you will be expecting something totally different. The write-up says: "DA suspects one of the delinquents he's prosecuting for murder is his son." That is totally misleading, as there is never any indication that one of the boys is Bell's son, nor does he even suspect it.
Anyhow, happy viewing!!!
