SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

HotToastyRag When Richard Widmark and his brother are shot in a robbery gone wrong, they are rushed to the hospital. Both are pretty racist and not afraid to show it, so when young doctor Sidney Poitier attends to their injuries, they verbally abuse him. Sidney thinks the stream of hatred is due to a brain tumor, but in his diagnosis and treatment, one brother dies. Richard Widmark believes Sidney murdered his brother on purpose, because racism in the hospital runs rampant on both sides, and he tries to get even. There's "no way out" of the hospital, but also no way to escape the hatred in the air.Not only is this one of the great shocking films of the 1950s that deals with racism, but it marks Sidney Poitier's film debut! It was quite a break for him, although he had to lie about his age to get the part, and he gives the first of many performances that break the color boundary in acting. You'd be hard pressed to see a movie that cast a black actor as a doctor in the 1940s. Both leads put their whole hearts into their performances; you'd never believe they were friends offscreen. Dick actually felt so terrible about saying racial slurs to Sidney that in-between takes, he would often apologize—it just goes to show you sometimes actors who get typecast as the bad guy are actually nice in real life!

HEFILM Great film nourish photography and grim world view in this film. All the performances are fine. Sparse music score is very effective and uses some tunes on a radio to good effect too. Approach to racial issues and poverty still seem true today in a realistic not preachy way. This is more film noir than political in nature--a major plus.Darnel is a stand out. The situation is interesting. Racial elements still spark heat even today or maybe even more heat as the politically correct 21st century wouldn't let the racism be as raw as it is here.My only complaint is a plot contrivance towards the end and then Widmark struggling with an over the top (writing wise) psycho coward villain ending that probably seemed a little fresher back then. It's not the actor's fault it's the concept and writing that just don't work.It's kind of like they wanted a "thriller" ending and the film would have done better with a more personal or internal conflict than the melodramatic way it goes. Also I see from the trivia section that the studio forced a change to the ending and this hurts as well.Too bad as it almost spoils a grade A movie. Still a film that deserves to be better known today, even if it stumbles in the final lap.

Steffi_P Hollywood, for all its reputation as a bastion of mainstream conservatism, could often be quite a forward-thinking institution. Years before the Civil Rights movement, long before it became trendy or even widely discussed, a major studio could produce an A-feature that dealt candidly and incisively with the issue of race.What is really surprising about No Way Out, is not that it is in an anti-racist picture from the 1950s, but that its attack on racism is incredibly mature. Even into the 1970s pictures that looked directly at race could be woefully patronising and heavy-handed. No Way Out however is clear in presenting the Sidney Poitier character as a central player in the drama who is able to act for himself, rather than having justice handed down to him by charitable white people. It actually pre-empts tokenistic attitudes, with the MD character claiming "If anything I'm pro-Negro", to which Stephen McNally rebukes "I'm just pro-good doctor".But it is not enough to simply make statements for equal ability – it is equally important to show it, and this is where Sidney Poitier comes in. With his calm, professional manner – the very antithesis of the servile stereotypes you see in 1930s cinema – Poitier makes a mockery of white supremecism. He takes the character beyond being a token black doctor dreamt up for the purposes of an anti-racist drama, and presents him as a doctor first and foremost. This was Poitier's first credited role, and although he still has a way to go he is clearly an actor to be reckoned with, showing all the powerful expressiveness in his face that would always be his best asset. It's rather neat that Poitier's antagonist here is Richard Widmark. Widmark makes his character utterly odious, often hysterical, yet still recognisably human. He is Poitier's opposite in every way, yet both actors have such a great depth and naturalism that they make perfect co-stars.But No Way Out is more than just an intellectual sermon. It is also a taut and gripping thriller. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz had recently won Oscars for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives, and was about to pull off the same trick this year with All About Eve. No Way Out is a slightly simpler job than those other pictures, and does not feature quite the same detail to visual information that was Mankiewicz's forte. Instead, he appears to have focused more on pacing. Many of the simple exposition scenes move at a speedy lick, with actors travelling from room to room as they talk, and shots beginning and ending with movement. This has the duel purpose of stopping these scenes being too static, and at once establishing a frantic, unsettled atmosphere. But here and there these hurried sequences give way to scenes of slow drawn-out tension, in which Mankiewicz ekes out a sense of danger with the power of suggestion, often in simple set-ups and long takes.And this brings us onto what is perhaps the most refreshing thing about No Way Out. It is not just that this is a thought-provoking anti-racist drama which engages its audience. It is the fact that a black actor could play a lead role in such a serious picture, on equal footing (if not billing) with his white co-stars. Granted, much of the plot is revealed through the eyes of Linda Darnell's character, especially in the latter half of the film, identification with a female lead being very much a Mankiewicz trademark. However Sidney Poitier is not the object or the catalyst or the victim of the story – he is the hero of No Way Out.

NewEnglandPat This fine drama details a story of racial strife and animosity in a production that presaged the civil rights movement in America by several years. The central figures are Richard Widmark, a bigoted hoodlum and hater of blacks, and Sidney Poitier, a black doctor who is accused of the murder of Widmark's brother while trying to save his life. Widmark and Poitier are excellent in the latter's first major Hollywood film. The picture's main thread is the state of affairs among blacks in American society and white attitudes towards them as mirrored in several characters in the film. Stephen McNally, Poitier's boss in the hospital, prizes the young doctor's skills and has a high opinion of him while Linda Darnell is indifferent to blacks. There is racism expressed by blacks as well in certain characters so neither side gets a moral pass in the film. The movie deserves wider popularity because of its courageous introduction of a troublesome subject to American audiences. Great acting, lensing and music make the picture a landmark film.