Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

utgard14 In 1861, New York detective John Kennedy (Dick Powell) is convinced there's a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln but no one seems to believe him. So he resigns from the force and takes the train to Baltimore, determined to prevent the assassination. In my opinion, this is Dick Powell's last great screen role. He made a few more movies before finishing his career out as a director and doing some minor TV work. He's very good here, as usual. Strong support from Adolphe Menjou, Will Geer, Leif Erickson, and Ruby Dee. It's a gripping period thriller from Anthony Mann that looks like a film noir, thanks to Paul Vogel's fine cinematography. Plus, it's a train movie and those are always fun.There's a lot in this movie for history buffs to chew on. A guy named John Kennedy trying to prevent a presidential assassination in a film made over a decade before President Kennedy was killed is certainly interesting. The plot is loosely based on the 1861 Baltimore Plot, which resulted in one of Lincoln's earliest public relations nightmares because he was accused of cowardly sneaking into the city for fear of assassins. Times have certainly changed. Anyway you should definitely read up on that as it's pretty fascinating, especially considering what happened to him four years later.

David Allen "The Tall Target" (1951 MGM) starring Dick Powell and Adolph Menjou Is A Great "Thriller On A Moving Train" Movie! "Moving train movies" always work, and this is a good example.Abe Lincoln, elected but not yet in office, tries to sneak into Washington DC and must get past southern sympathetic and very hostile Baltimore Maryland USA on a train......assassins wait to shoot him during a planned Lincoln whistle stop speech from the rear of his train stopping briefly in Baltimore Maryland USA on its way to to Washington DC.Most of the movie takes place aboard the train, and most scenes show the passing scenery from the train windows.....the movie takes place mostly in the inside of the train's passenger compartments.Train movies are worth studying and comparing....."The Lady Vanishes" (1937 UK) starring Michael Redgrave, "A Hard Day's Night" (1964 United Artists) starring the Beatles, "North By Northwest" (1959) starring Cary Grant, "The Thirty Nine Steps" (1935 Gaumont) starring Robert Donat.....all great train movies which "move" because they take place in a visibly moving train (airplane movies can't compete with moving train movies, and neither can ocean liner and "ship" movies).Train movies require very good actors, and "The Tall Target" (1951 MGM) starring Dick Powell, Adolph Menjou, and Will Geer deliver the "good actor goods" in first class style.Train movies are an excuse for many facial closeups, and prolonged conversation and dialog sequences where two main actors in a small space (a train compartment, most often) talk back and forth, and have to sound interesting, convincing, and at the same time be visually interesting (i.e. the camera must "like" the actors.....put another way, the main actors must have "star quality" in train movies).Train movies also provide great chances for interesting and unusual character actors.....weird people traveling on the train main characters are stuck with....trains are claustrophobic, part of their charm and and dramatic usefulness in "train movies." Eccentric old ladies, obnoxious yet precocious children, beautiful ladies of various types, entertainers, uniformed soldiers......an excuse to use all the costumes in the famous Western Costume Co. (Hollywood) storage tower on Melrose Ave. located in Hollywood, Calif. USA. An excuse to beef up the monotonous, predictable scenery on trains, especially older ones usually dull and dark and claustrophobic."The Tall Target" (1951 MGM) takes place almost completely on board the insides of a moving passenger train, right to the end of the movie....the train is still moving as it enters 1861 Washington DC USA and the final "The End, Made In Hollywood USA, MGM Studios" credit flashes on the screen (BTW, MGM was located in Culver City, California, far away from Hollywood, Caifornia....not even a short automobile drive away....far away!) It's a good "moving train movie," and is worth seeing and comparing to other movies of its interesting, always successful type.--------------- Written by Tex Allen, SAG-AFTRA movie actor. Visit WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen for more information about Tex Allen. Tex Allen's email address is TexAllen@Rocketmail.Com.See Tex Allen Movie Credits, Biography, and 2012 photos at WWW.IMDb.Me/TexAllen. See other Tex Allen written movie reviews....almost 100 titles.... at: "http://imdb.com/user/ur15279309/comments" (paste this address into your URL Browser)

Spikeopath "Ninety years ago a lonely traveller boarded the night train from New York to Washington D.C., and when he reached his destination his passage had become a forgotten chapter in the history of the United States. This motion picture is a dramatisation of that disputed journey."The Tall Target is directed by Anthony Mann and written by George Worthing Yates, Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Holmes) and Art Cohn. It stars Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou, Marshall Thompson and Will Geer. As the above opening salvo suggests, story is disputed, it's based around the so called Baltimore Plot, a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln; the tall man of the title who is on the train heading for his inauguration.Set mostly aboard a train, Mann's The Tall Target is a very tight noirish type period thriller that sees Powell's gruff detective try and protect Abe Lincoln from assassins lurking within the confines of the locomotive hauled express. Although a low budget production, there is some smart period detail to enjoy and the cramped setting of the train interiors allows Mann to infuse the story with paranoia and claustrophobic tints. Major bonus is that the makers excellently capture what must have been a powder keg of political uncertainty in 1861, this is born out by the number of interesting characters with a voice aboard this train. Thus the suspense and mystery elements are not confined to being of the obvious variety.With Paul Vogel's black and white photography adding some period bite, and putting the noirish sheen to scenes such as the ones involving smoke, it's a shame that the cast are mostly hit and miss. Powell just about carries off the tough-guy persona, with the scenes shared with Menjou good value, and Geer is the stand out as the jobs worth conductor. Raymond is lovely, but hardly puts a stamp on proceedings, while Thompson is badly inadequate when it comes to putting the threat into threatening situations. But they are only minor itches that fail to derail the film from the tracks, because ultimately it's the story that is the star, a story boosted no end by Mann's taut direction. 7.5/10

bkoganbing Although the film is a work of fiction, The Tall Target is based in part on an actual incident that involved an attempt to assassinate President- elect Abraham Lincoln on his way to Washington to assume the presidency in early 1861. A planned stop in Baltimore was canceled and Lincoln was spirited into Washington in the wee small hours of the morning with no kind of fanfare or publicity, as he put it, 'like a thief in the night'.Anthony Mann directed this 19th century noir type film starring Dick Powell as a New York police sergeant who gets wind of a plot to murder Lincoln in Baltimore. After he confides his suspicions to colleague Regis Toomey, Toomey winds up dead and Powell's more convinced than ever of the rightness of his belief. He boards the train that Lincoln is scheduled to board in Baltimore on to warn him, but Powell's got a lot of people on that train ready to do him in and he doesn't know who to trust.The Tall Target is very similar to Mann's other classic Winchester 73 in the tautness of the direction and script. There isn't one wasted frame of film in The Tall Target and the suspense is kept throughout, even though history tells us Lincoln dodged a bullet that day. Mann assembled a very strong supporting cast for Powell that includes Adolphe Menjou as a militia colonel called to the colors, Leif Erickson as a Bowery tough, Will Geer as an officious conductor, Marshall Thompson as a southern hothead and resigned West Point cadet and his sister Paula Raymond.Best performance in the film though is that of young Ruby Dee who plays a slave to Thompson and Raymond traveling with them. She proves to be the only real friend Powell has on the train. It's a quiet understated performance of dignity and strength.By the way in case any of you are wondering why she doesn't just run away and claim her freedom, a couple of things stops her. The Dred Scott decision for one which obliterated the Missouri Compromise of 1820 with the northern free and southerns slave states and the new Fugitive Slave Law from the 1850 Compromise. However Dee knows that freedom is coming her way and soon.The Tall Target is one excellent film, one of the best from Dick Powell when he decided to stop making musicals. Catch it absolutely.