Thunder Bay (1953)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Jimmy Stewart proves in this film he can bring something to even an average script by playing his role powerfully. This battle between shrimp fishermen and oilmen does not work with Stewart. This one is prime Stewart.He has solid directing and Joane Dru plus Harry Morgan head a solid support cast. Still, while the script is a bit weak, Stewart takes this movie and makes it better than it should have been. I can't see another actor in the role of the oilman bringing this one in. The was one of the earlier films where oilmen and the environment are addressed. While it is a little weak on the conflict, the actual facts on this issue are still not addressed properly now.Men and technology have to co-exist. One side or the other is not right as we can not afford to get out of the middle on these types of issues. While the environment is the most important issue, going to either extreme will kill people. It does not matter if the polluter kills people or the environmentalist does, murder is murder.When Stewart draws a line in the sand, as he does here, he brings something special to the table. That something special is what we need more of. It takes the good drama of a film like this to bring that out.

This was decent entertainment but nothing special, which it could have been with the likes of James Stewart, Joanne Dru, Dan Duryea and Gilbert Roland, and directed by Anthony Mann. This is supposed to be very good widescreen viewing but, unfortunately, I haven't viewed it on that format. We are all stuck with a formatted-to-TV tape until a DVD is released on this film. What's the holdup?Duryea and Stewart played their normal interesting roles. This is mainly storytelling, even though it's listed as an "action movie." Nobody gets killed, and there is very little violence and, of course, no profanity. It's simply a story of some people who are the first to successfully drill oil offshore and the resistance they get from the local fishermen.Dru mostly frowns through the picture, so she's not that likable as the female romantic lead. Stewart's squeaky voice doesn't across that well here, either. He sounded better on most of his other films. It's an okay movie but certainly not one I would watch frequently, but I would like to see this in its intended widescreen version.

First I would like to say I liked this film. It deals in a simplistic way with a complex subject which is the impact of the search for oil in a fishermen's habitat. There are two moments in the film which show changes in attitudes which are too fast to be accepted by the spectator, first when Joanne Dru declares her love for James Stewart and second when the fishermen who came to fight with the men in the platform decide to go away after they strike oil. It is good to see three men who were responsible for the successful Winchester 73 together again. A beautiful and mature Joanne Dru is the woman trying to prevent her sister Marcia Henderson from falling in love with Dan Duryea, because she made a mistake in the past. Stewart and Duryea are desperately trying to find the oil before the money finishes. Even though this is a minor work by Anthony Mann he knows how to tell a story and keep you entertained.

Thunder Bay is an anomaly, a pedantic film on a subject seldom dealt with in the movies, the conflict between businessmen, whose ambitions will cause great change in the local landscape, and the locals, who want things to remain as they are. In this case it's oil drillers versus shrimp fisherman in the Louisiana of the early 1950's. The conflict at times seems almost Marxian, with James Stewart's hardheaded, no-nonsense outsider going up against ragin' Cajun Gilbert Roland, a far more charming and sympathetic figure. Rather than shy away from class conflict, the movie confronts the issue repeatedly, in a variety of ways, and builds up a good deal of tension along the way, as Stewart's compulsive, oil drilling loner, increasingly isolated, takes on the entire community. There's a good deal of fifties sociology here, with the modern, inner-directed Stewart against the tradition-centered fishing people. Neither side understands the other, as one can well see how these local folks would view Stewart as an uncaring and forbidding figure, the embodiment of alien, big city values. On the other hand these people are a rough and tumble lot, uneducated, clannish and utterly without curiosity. It's easy to see how an educated man might look down on them. There's a good deal of action along the way, and some fist-fights. At a time when many Americans still thought of themselves in terms of class, and with the Depression fresh in everyone's minds, it was rather bold of director Anthony Mann to take on this subject from a middle of the road, basically Republican (but not right wing) perspective. In this respect the movie, which came out in the first year of the Eisenhower administration, heralded a new era of compromise, with the promise of better things yet to come. As to which side is right, well, you be the judge. I'm still thinking this over.