Pressure Point

Stanley Kramer, Hollywood’s original good liberal, may not have directed (most of) this film, but his fingerprints are all over it. From the histrionic treatment of socially important material to the presence of movie stars in subbing in for ideological arguments, Pressure Point has all the hallmarks of his cinema. It asks that we try and understand, if not empathize, with a young white male who slowly gets radicalized by Nazi ideology. No thanks, I’m good. Sidney Poitier gets the thankless role of the saintly therapist; Peter Falk gets an even worse role as a struggling upstart who gets told this story by Poitier’s veteran as a form of lesson teaching and bridge-building. It is Bobby Darin as the wild youth that really energizes the movie. His movie career was brief but what a dynamite screen actor he was! As a teen idol, you’d think he’d go for less substantive parts and instead play it easy with teen-orientated romances with then-wife Sandra Dee, but between his Nazi sympathizer youth here and PTSD victim in Captain Newman, M.D., which nabbed him his lone Oscar nomination, he revealed a terrific naturalism and fearlessness in never asking to be liked in his roles. He’s far better than Pressure Point deserves.