In The Bedford Incident, Richard Widmark, so often miscast in heroic roles, is up to his old bad guy tricks of the sort that first brought him fame almost twenty years earlier. He plays a paranoid Navy captain playing cat and mouse with a Russian sub in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. This is a good, tense film in the urgent black and white Lumet and Frankenheimer manner popular in the sixties, only it's directed by James Harris, who handles the material well, especially in the film's dramatic moments. Sidney Poitier is on board as a Life magazine reporter whose race is never mentioned. A nice touch. Obvious, but well done. Martin Balsam plays a doctor not cut out for Navy life, as Captain Widmark is wont to remind him. This is a well-acted Cold War melodrama, reminiscent of the teleplays Rod Serling used to write. It was indeed written by live television veteran James Poe. It would have been a lot better if it was not so reminiscent of other movies, such as Fail-Safe, and in a way The Caine Mutiny, whose Captain Queeg the Bedford's skipper is an alpha version of. The supporting performances of Michael Kane and Wally Cox are especially good, but it's Widmark's show, and he does not disappoint.
Review of The Bedford Incident
