I wanted to watch No Way Out (1987), but noticed that there is an older movie with the same name too. As Sidney Poitier had just died it would be interesting to check it out.
There are some proper scenes here, but there are a lot of painfully cringe scenes too as you'd expect from such an anti-racism themed movie that tries to teach you a lesson about why "hating Black people is morally bad". Now, with these older movies there are a lot of fans that look past all the mistakes that would never be forgiven in a modern project. Wooden acting, slow-paced plot, silly scenes, on the nose dialogue, nonsensical acts and scenes. It's decently structured to sorta be engaging enough if you are really bored, but not really worth your time.
Sidney Poitier plays a weak and timid Black doctor. Not really realistic, but fine enough acting. He tends to shout and whine a lot. Stephen McNally is really great here! By far the best thing about the movie as the White doctor who doesn't see race. Him not taking race into consideration at any point was just presented as a great thing which won't happen in a modern Hollywood movie. Richard Widmark is the criminal who wants to kill the Black doctor for treating his brother right before he died. He is over the top and cringe. Painfully bad performance that makes the movie a hard watch. He constantly repeats his silly statements about how much he hates Black people. The dialogue in this movie is extremely on the nose. Linda Darnell is quite good. She plays the ex-wife of the dead brother. Playing both the Black and White side from scene to scene as she is confused about what she hates or supports. It's a huge miss that she never really becomes a love interest or either Poitier or McNally. If she did the movie would be quite awesome and dramatic. I would have loved to see the drama unfold. Instead it's all about this silly nonsensical revenge and this plot is not nearly enough to last this long. The movie overall should have been 25 minutes shorter. The plot is weak and many scenes continue for way too long. Even after they explain their motivation we have scenes continue on forever so that they can explain it again and again. Not sure how stupid they think viewers are. But it gets boring after some time.
Now, I'm sure many will throw words like classic and great around. We always see enormous support for slow-paced B&W melodrama. But it's really not a good movie. Here are some of the silly scenes:
When the criminal brothers are taken to the hospital the evil brother is constantly being racist and even hits out at Poitier. Yet they keep them together in one room. So Poitier has to listen to abuse and hear the evil brother call him various racist names while he is trying to save the decent brother. The evil brother even tries to hit him. Yet they are NEVER split up. Of course the decent brother dies. Like, Poitier has no way to treat him fast and properly in that situation. And the evil brother of course blames Poitier and now wants to kill him. He also starts a huge fight getting more people injured all because he was forced to watch this treatment that ended badly. Poitier should have told the cops to remove the evil brother from the room. He was failing as a doctor.
There is also a scene where the White gang tries to beat up the Black town because a "Black doctor killed one of them". Also weird. So what's the plan? I'm not sure what the logic was here, but this stuff doesn't happen for a good reason. White gangs don't just try to attack Black neighborhoods like this. It would cause such a violent and destructive counter-reaction that the White town would turn into rubble. I feel like the writers should have been smarter about this. These actions made no sense whatsoever as they would lead to certain destruction.
There is a scene where a bunch of violent racist criminals are in the hospital. And their racist family members get to stand around and watch the Black doctor treat them. Obviously this infuriates them enough to take it out on him. Again, what did the cops think would happen? Why is the hospital stuff so ignorant?
There is a scene where the evil brother is cuffed to a single cop and only his deaf criminal brother is in the room too. They were 3 brothers. So 2 violent killers with one single cop. What do you think happens? Of course the deaf brother attacks the cop and they both escape. Why is security so terrible?
There is also a scene where the ex-wife is kept captured by the deaf criminal. She could turn around and shout for help at any point. And she often does turn around, but for some reason she never shouts even though the criminals already clearly explained that the deaf criminal would have to watch her mouth so that she can't scream. Of course the plot doesn't want it to happen so it doesn't. But when a solution is this simple and it's not used it's hard to take the film seriously.
There are just a ton of silly scenes that are in the movie to magically advance the plot even though they make no sense. Instead we should have had a real setting with bad mistakes happen. Not a silly hospital with stupid norms making it all fail. And not making the attractive female lead a love interest is a gigantic miss. That extra drama would have made the movie no matter who she fell in love with. As of now the movie just ends suddenly and we don't really know what happened to who or what will happen now. So what's the point of watching it? It feels like it's way too long so adding on that extra plot would fill the time properly and make it good overall. The ending could then also lead to something greater. The only thing I liked was the White doctor and then the 1950's setting. That saved the movie from being bad. But it's still not good.
There are some proper scenes here, but there are a lot of painfully cringe scenes too as you'd expect from such an anti-racism themed movie that tries to teach you a lesson about why "hating Black people is morally bad". Now, with these older movies there are a lot of fans that look past all the mistakes that would never be forgiven in a modern project. Wooden acting, slow-paced plot, silly scenes, on the nose dialogue, nonsensical acts and scenes. It's decently structured to sorta be engaging enough if you are really bored, but not really worth your time.
Sidney Poitier plays a weak and timid Black doctor. Not really realistic, but fine enough acting. He tends to shout and whine a lot. Stephen McNally is really great here! By far the best thing about the movie as the White doctor who doesn't see race. Him not taking race into consideration at any point was just presented as a great thing which won't happen in a modern Hollywood movie. Richard Widmark is the criminal who wants to kill the Black doctor for treating his brother right before he died. He is over the top and cringe. Painfully bad performance that makes the movie a hard watch. He constantly repeats his silly statements about how much he hates Black people. The dialogue in this movie is extremely on the nose. Linda Darnell is quite good. She plays the ex-wife of the dead brother. Playing both the Black and White side from scene to scene as she is confused about what she hates or supports. It's a huge miss that she never really becomes a love interest or either Poitier or McNally. If she did the movie would be quite awesome and dramatic. I would have loved to see the drama unfold. Instead it's all about this silly nonsensical revenge and this plot is not nearly enough to last this long. The movie overall should have been 25 minutes shorter. The plot is weak and many scenes continue for way too long. Even after they explain their motivation we have scenes continue on forever so that they can explain it again and again. Not sure how stupid they think viewers are. But it gets boring after some time.
Now, I'm sure many will throw words like classic and great around. We always see enormous support for slow-paced B&W melodrama. But it's really not a good movie. Here are some of the silly scenes:
When the criminal brothers are taken to the hospital the evil brother is constantly being racist and even hits out at Poitier. Yet they keep them together in one room. So Poitier has to listen to abuse and hear the evil brother call him various racist names while he is trying to save the decent brother. The evil brother even tries to hit him. Yet they are NEVER split up. Of course the decent brother dies. Like, Poitier has no way to treat him fast and properly in that situation. And the evil brother of course blames Poitier and now wants to kill him. He also starts a huge fight getting more people injured all because he was forced to watch this treatment that ended badly. Poitier should have told the cops to remove the evil brother from the room. He was failing as a doctor.
There is also a scene where the White gang tries to beat up the Black town because a "Black doctor killed one of them". Also weird. So what's the plan? I'm not sure what the logic was here, but this stuff doesn't happen for a good reason. White gangs don't just try to attack Black neighborhoods like this. It would cause such a violent and destructive counter-reaction that the White town would turn into rubble. I feel like the writers should have been smarter about this. These actions made no sense whatsoever as they would lead to certain destruction.
There is a scene where a bunch of violent racist criminals are in the hospital. And their racist family members get to stand around and watch the Black doctor treat them. Obviously this infuriates them enough to take it out on him. Again, what did the cops think would happen? Why is the hospital stuff so ignorant?
There is a scene where the evil brother is cuffed to a single cop and only his deaf criminal brother is in the room too. They were 3 brothers. So 2 violent killers with one single cop. What do you think happens? Of course the deaf brother attacks the cop and they both escape. Why is security so terrible?
There is also a scene where the ex-wife is kept captured by the deaf criminal. She could turn around and shout for help at any point. And she often does turn around, but for some reason she never shouts even though the criminals already clearly explained that the deaf criminal would have to watch her mouth so that she can't scream. Of course the plot doesn't want it to happen so it doesn't. But when a solution is this simple and it's not used it's hard to take the film seriously.
There are just a ton of silly scenes that are in the movie to magically advance the plot even though they make no sense. Instead we should have had a real setting with bad mistakes happen. Not a silly hospital with stupid norms making it all fail. And not making the attractive female lead a love interest is a gigantic miss. That extra drama would have made the movie no matter who she fell in love with. As of now the movie just ends suddenly and we don't really know what happened to who or what will happen now. So what's the point of watching it? It feels like it's way too long so adding on that extra plot would fill the time properly and make it good overall. The ending could then also lead to something greater. The only thing I liked was the White doctor and then the 1950's setting. That saved the movie from being bad. But it's still not good.