The Drive

Track of the Cat (1954)
directed by William A. Wellman
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

I like Robert Mitchum for the same reason I like John Elway (or Dan Marino in his Papa John's campaign): in the big games, he goes deep. When Mitchum grows a beard, his weak chin - the only demure feature of a larger-than-life star - gives way to the mountain man, and Old Rumple Eyes' low incantations of resentment and empire set his bedroom peepers back into the monolithic register of dull, bloody instinct. The movie is betrayed by its own ambitions towards myth, Expressionism, and iconography, but a bad half-hour still buys those first fleet sixty minutes (a nickel gets you a dime), and the cinematography is more than worth the tumid Eugene O'Neill theatrics.