Act of Violence, from 1948, is a mildly suspenseful film noir/drama starring Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, and Janet Leigh. Directed by Fred Zinnemann, this film features Mary Astor and Phyllis Thaxter in supporting roles. It's a film that is quick to get to the action...no waiting around for things to start happening.
The film begins as a man with a limp, gun in hand, gets on a bus to Los Angeles. After arriving and checking into a hotel, said man, Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan, again in an angry man role), rifles through the phone book until he finds the name Frank Enley.
After being honored at a community event, Frank Enley (Van Heflin), a successful contractor with a wife and child, departs for a fishing trip with a friend. After Frank has left the house, Joe Parkson arrives at Frank's door. Though Frank's wife Edith (Janet Leigh) has never seen Parkson before, she ends up telling him that Frank has gone fishing at Redwood Lake.
Joe makes his own way to Redwood Lake, where he rents a boat and rows out to within a few hundred feet of where the marina manager indicated Frank could be found. Before he can shoot Frank, though, Frank and his friend head back to shore. When the marina manager asks Frank if his friend found him, and then describes the friend as being a lame man, Frank becomes totally agitated and hightails it back home.
At home, Frank is even more paranoid and anxious---he closes all the drapes, turns off the lights, double checks the door locks, and refuses to let his wife answer the phone. And when the doorbell rings, he nearly freaks out. Frank obviously knows a lame man, and he knows what the lame man wants with him, but at first, he refuses to tell Edith anything. Eventually, Frank reveals that while in a German prison camp during the war, he betrayed some of his men. Parkson, one of the men under his command, while not killed as the other men had been, had been injured. Now he was out for revenge.
As Joe makes contact with Edith, she tries to get him to see that what happened was in the past and that it needs to be left there. Also trying to get Joe to see that his desire for vengeance is wrong is his girlfriend (Phyllis Thaxter). But Joe doesn't see it that way...all he can see is that Frank needs to pay for being a traitor to his own men. So, Joe keeps chasing Frank down...and Frank keeps running.
Does Joe kill Frank? Or is he finally able to let the past go? As for Frank, is he able to let go of the past himself and stop running from his mistake? These are the questions that will play out in the remainder of this film.
While Act of Violence is nothing spectacular, it is an interesting, entertaining film with good acting. This was actually one of the films in which I began to have respect for Van Heflin. My first exposure to Heflin was several years ago in 3:10 to Yuma. It's funny, because while his character in that film (Dan Evans) was bold and courageous, for some reason, I just saw Heflin as rather milque-toasty. It wasn't until this film and Possessed that I actually began to see him in another light. I definitely enjoyed him here, and, of course, I love Robert Ryan in roles like this. He is good and solid here...as always.
This film is out on DVD so it should be quite easy to track down. Happy viewing!!
