Slattery's Hurricane

Richard Widmark as a pilot romancing both Linda Darnell & Veronica Lake. Lucky bastard! However, there was this weird cold vibe to both the romances and the crime element didn't bring as much danger as the flirting did, even if he was overreaching against the criminal elements. Some noir tricks, but it ends-up mainly as a patriotic moral tale with a gimmick hurricane ending.

A great cast, and I can't help liking the unapologetic grandiosity of the metaphor where the guy who's entangled in a love triangle and a drug smuggling ring fly a plane into a hurricane. Still, the film never really gets off the ground (excuse the pun).

Widmark is always a watchable leading man, but this melodrama is a little too heavy handed to be convincing - Lake as the dowdy lady-friend that Widmark discards is an interesting piece of casting, but one wonders if a switch of Darnell and Lake may have yielded better results. As it is the clunky overarching metaphor of Slattery flying into a literal hurricane is almost laughably on-the-nose, and does not help bring greater significance to the middling soap opera on the ground.

Is it just me or did that hurricane hit a LAKE