Violent Road (1958)

Too much of everything

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Six desperate men are hired to transport a dangerous cargo over a rough desert road, lured by the promise of a big bonus -- if they survive the trip. The main protagonists are a tough, cynical womanizer (Brian Keith) and a late-middle-aged failure (Dick Foran) who's at the end of his rope.Does any of this sound familiar? The movie -- just like a certain classic foreign film which will remain unacknowledged by the parties responsible for this turkey -- even begins with a literal bang, as an out-of-control rocket takes out a schoolyard full of kids and moms. (Which is probably the one-and-only truly shocking moment in this entire movie, mostly due to its gratuitous body count.) Unfortunately, comparing "Violent Road" to "Wages of Fear" is a bit like comparing a bottle of stale malt liquor (with a couple of cigarette butts floating in it) to a shot of Casa Noble crystal tequila. OK, I exaggerate: Watching "Violent Road" wasn't nearly as unpleasant as downing said bottle of stale malt liquor, butts and all, would no doubt be. But the fact remains this could serve as a primer on how to take the elements of a classic thriller and botch every single one of them.Instead of a series of fiendish obstacles which will test the limits of the drivers' ingenuity, courage and endurance, they're challenged first by a remarkably goofy sequence involving one of the phoniest boulders in cinematic history.When they reach a spot where a landslide has almost completely blocked the road, as the first truck negotiates this narrow pass, the vibration dislodges some gravel, a few rocks and a paper-mache boulder -- just one, mind you. As this massive rock is bounding like a jackrabbit with its tail on fire down that near-vertical slope one of the drivers comes out of nowhere and *deflects it* with a brilliantly-executed flying kick! Now that was a pretty amazing stunt, but from the size of the boulder, if it had been the real thing it would have weighed at least half a ton. Can you say "shattered kneecap, tibia and fibula"? Boy howdy, but those 50s-era fuc -- er, truckers were REALLY tough.Note also that unlike "The Wages of Fear", instead of nitro, these guys are transporting the separate components of rocket fuel (hydrazine, concentrated hydrogen peroxide, and nitric acid) which means if even one of the trucks doesn't get through, the whole exercise will have been pointless. So you can safely bet all the trucks will reach their destination, because if there's one thing that's certain about this film it's that it will remain uncontaminated by any trace of that wimpy, Frenchified bleak existentialism.So much for suspense, then.Although just as in "Wages of Fear" they kill off Dick Foran's character near the end of the film, here it's done in a way which mostly makes him look like an idiot, while leaving Brian Keith's character entirely blameless. (No moral ambiguities here, Bub!) Seriously: Foran discovers a cap on a nitric acid tank that's been jarred loose and is leaking, yet despite having been warned about how nasty and corrosive the stuff is, he tightens it with his bare hand? Don't truckers who transport hazardous cargo have toolboxes, maybe with a pipe wrench or even some heavy-duty rubber gloves? The boys encounter their next big challenge when the brakes fail on an oncoming school bus -- yet it still manages to negotiate several hairpin turns as it barrels down a steep mountain road. Just in the nick of time, the skilled and courageous drivers pull their trucks off the road. Whew!Then the brakes fail on one of the trucks, but Keith wrastles it down from on top of a mountain. Wotta man! And no one will leave their seats during the protracted towing sequence. Don't get me wrong: I admire Brian Keith as an actor. That still doesn't make the way this ends any easier to take. I wanted to go all Elvis on the TV screen, for the blatant thumb-in-the-eye they give to the original.But if you have some time to kill and this is your only option versus, say, a documentary on antique Serbo-Croatian mustache cups, hey, go for it.

***SPOILERS*** Remake of the 1953 spine tingling French action film "Wages of Fear" the film "Violent Road" has a pumped up with his python like muscles bursting in every direction, where later in the film he's forced to take his shirt off before it rips apart, Brian Keith as maverick trucker Mitch Barton. Barton is hired by Cyclone Rocket Company boss Mr. Nelson, Ed Prentiss, to drive a three truck convoy of dangerous and explosive rocket flue components across the desert to a new place where the company is re-located.Offered $5,000.00 for their work Barton doesn't have any trouble finding volunteers to drive the truck cross country through dangerous side road, thus avoiding population centers, to their destination. One of the truck drivers is the spaced out and guilt ridden George Lawrence played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It's Lawrence who's in fact responsible for the fiery death of his entire family, as well as hundreds others, when a rocket that he had launched at the Cyclone Rocket Launch Center smashed into a nearby town killing everyone in it!The tense and dangerous ride has many short falls for Barton and his half dozen drivers where one of them the washed out and alcoholic US Marine Frank "Sarge" Miller, Dick Foran, loses his life trying to plug a valve that's leaking out dangerous chemicals in his truck. It's the last ten or so minutes when the action in the movie becomes almost unbearable to watch! With time and fuel running out Barton makes the choice to go all out and damn the toreadors or truck load of dangerous chemicals to make it to home base, the new Cyclone Rocket Plant, before the sun goes down. ***SPOILERS*** Predictable ending, if you saw either the movies "Wages of Fear" or it's later , after "Violent Road", re-make the 1977 thriller "Sorcerer" in the final outcome of the ride into and out of hell by Mitch Barton & Co. But It's the final few minutes in the movie that were far more uplifting then in the two other far more superior films about the same subject.

The Violent Road casts Brian Keith taking on a really hazardous trip, transporting three components of rocket fuel, any one of them could reek havoc of some kind if it is jarred. Making it worse Keith has to travel over an abandoned road with little traffic that is rocky. It's like traveling with nitroglycerin with triple the risk.The place storing the stuff has to move because a military rocket experiment went horribly wrong and crashed into the town causing death and destruction. Keith also has to pick five other men willing to make the risk. One is picked for him, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. who is a scientist and knows how to handle the fuel.The other four are Sean Garrison, Perry Lopez, Arthur Batanides and Dick Foran. Foran's portrayal is a poignant one. A former Marine who was mandatory retired he can't get used to it. He just drinks all day and bores the young Marines at the bar that Keith finds him. Foran's scenes with wife Ann Doran are truly touching.The Violent Road is a nice no frills B picture from Warner Brothers, the kind that used to fill the second bill on a program. Now that stuff would be found on television and shortly Keith and Zimbalist would be seen there often.

While I can't say I prefer this film to either Wages of Fear or Sorcerer, I agree that it is pretty enjoyable. Some of the wisecracks and banter are pure 1950's hard-boiled pulp, and Brian Keith has never been better as a certain type of swaggering man's man particular to that Era."Walker would shrink his own mother's head for a dollar.""I'm not allergic to a buck, either." "You pull a stunt like that again I'll rub yer head in the sand til its hamburger!" While all of this is certainly amusing in a time capsule kind of way, the film itself plays like the storyboards to a much more tension-filled film. Compared to the trials and tribulations undergone by the doomed men in both Wages of Fear and Sorcerer, the journey in Violent Road is rather muted. But still, an enjoyable way to spend an hour and twenty eight minutes.