It is a performances centric movie

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

In 1955, as repugnance of McCarthyism raged in America, this film emerged, trying to come to terms with racism and the treatment of Japanese-Americans during the war. What an extraordinary thing that is, acknowledging a shameful injustice at a time when some considered it subversive to do so. Spencer Tracy is in the lead role of a lone, one-arm stranger who gets off a train in a dusty town in the middle of nowhere at the film's beginning. He's met with rude behavior from the townsfolk from the start, and director John Sturges is brilliant in gradually ramping this up to outright hostility. The town has a secret surrounding a Japanese-American we never see, because he disappeared shortly after Pearl Harbor. Tracy's character feels a debt to this man because his son died trying to save his life in Italy. He's just one quiet man against a group of racist thugs, whose ringleader is played well by Reno Smith, and his own safety becomes seriously threatened. It has the feel of classic westerns, but with a very different reason for the conflict. One of the wonderful aspects about the film is that there is only one exchange that reveals the ugliness of this guy's beliefs, that there was no difference between Japanese-Americans and those who bombed Pearl Harbor or who tortured Americans on the Bataan Death March. There are no others; the beliefs simply lie buried and dormant, under what to the dominant culture will appear a rural but 'normal' town. There are those who know what happened is wrong, but are complicit in their silence. In all of this, it's easy to see the parallels to racism today. The strongest performance in the film comes from Lee Marvin, who is seriously creepy and intimidating as one of the heavies. Ernest Borgnine is also very good as another, and the scene he has with Tracy in the diner, pushing him to the very limit, is one of the film's best. Spencer Tracy is strong, but I have to say, at 55, he was probably a little bit too old for the role, Oscar nomination notwithstanding.The film is well paced at just 81 minutes, which is just right for the story. It's unfortunate that the musical score wasn't as restrained. Andre Previn's score is over-the-top and far too expressive in several of the film's scenes. It's also a little odd that the town, as small as it is, appears to have one and only one woman (Anne Francis). With that said, how fantastic the film's message is, that standing up for what's right sometimes means standing up for a powerless minority, and there is a need to speak up instead of remaining silent. It channels the best of what America should be, made in 1955 at a time when those values were threatened, and viewed 63 years later, when this humble reviewer can't help but feel they are threatened again.

Film Soleil, those sun baked, filled with light, desert/tropical Noir/Neo Noirs."Change the darkened street to a dry, sun-beaten road. Convert the dark alley to a highway mercilessly cutting through a parched, sagebrush-filled desert. Give the woman cowboy boots and stick her in a speeding car, driven by a deranged man whose own biological drives lead him less often to sex than to fights over money. Institute these changes (to film noir) and you have film soleil." - DK HolmIn the city it's usually what you can't see that can kill you. In the desert everything you see can kill you.Desert, the anti-city. Wide open spaces, exposed, agoraphobia. A stream-liner is snaking. A steel sidewinder.Black Rock. Nowheresville. A Death Valley desert fly speck. Whistle stop. Somewhere on the California/Nevada border. The Southern Pacific RR. A dirt road main street. A baker's dozen collection of dilapidated buildings. The station. The beanery, Sam's Bar & Grill. A General Store abutting a barber shop. A two story hotel. A sawbones/morticians, a gas station, two residences and a rinky-dink hoosegow.It must be Saturday. Hicksville. Everybody's in town. Cowboy porch lizards. Relaxin'. Shootin' the breeze. Waiting' for the Streamliner to blow through. She's Greased lightning. Like clockwork. The day's big excitement. A faint rumble. The train's a coming'. You can hear the drone of the F7's down the valley. The pitch changes. The horn blares. Station agent excited. She's stopping. A train hasn't stopped here in four years. What's up. Lizards all rubbernecking.A man gets off. Looks like a city slicker. Suit, tie, fedora, suitcase. A Stranger. Ex career vet. A one hand man, Macreedy (Tracy).Adobe Flat! The name raises bristles. He's looking' fer Komoko. It stirs the hornet's nest. The lizards get standoff-ish. Hostile. Downright cantankerous. The crap hits the fan. Oh Komoko he left town they tell him, sent to an internment camp.They telephone the biggest toad in their pond Reno Smith (Ryan). But the cat's already out of the bag. Something is wrong, slantindicular, cattywampus. Macreedy knows they're lying. But he doesn't know why.Cowboy Coley (Borgnine) is glassing Macreedy from a boulder patch. He ambushes him on the way back to town. Tries to run him off the road. Back in town Coley is still trying to provoke, trying to raise sand. Spencer Tracy goes from stoically laconic to determinedly obsessed as the odds and the towns alienation build against him. Robert Ryan's unfriendly persuasion streaks more vicious as the truth is slowly exposed. Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin are the two town bullies both are a few cards short of a full deck. Dean Jagger the town lawman and Walter Brennan a sawbones/mortician are the town drunks. John Ericson is a fidgety hotel keeper and Anne Francis servers as the film's nominal femme fatale.The film juxtaposes the high desert grit of a weathered bleached bones town against a backdrop of astonishing but desolate beauty. The film has a fascinating Edward Hopperesque realism look to it. This was MGM's first release in Cinemascope. 10/10

American film 'Bad Day at Black Rock' begins with an express train running through Mojave desert in California.It makes an unscheduled stop at a small town which has not seen any train stop there for the last four years.This brief yet interesting description is enough to guarantee ample thrills to viewers.However,director John Sturges and his leading man Spencer Tracy contribute a lot to ensure that their film also discusses some issues of supreme importance especially the hypocrisy of small town people who would do anything to let some secrets remain buried in the ground.This is plenty of action in the film with imaginative use of hands and mouths.Apart from some good performances by Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine, it is actor Spencer Tracy who completely dominates the film.It is said that a leading man doesn't lose cool easily.However, no hero would keep quiet when unjustly provoked.It is precisely for this reason that he emerges as a true hero despite having a severe physical handicap.

This is one of the all time classics with a great plot and the certain twists and turns it takes you on wondering if Spencers character is going to get out of town alive or not and where everyone clicks just right having movie greats like Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and of course Spencer Tracy you can't really say anything bad about this movie other than the fight scene between Ernest Borgnine and Spencer Tracy where he does his judo throw on Ernest is such a terrible job as a double standing in. Every time I see that part of the movie I want to find out how that got by the director. The guy was like more slender and like a foot taller and he didn't even look anything like Spencer Tracy. I always wonder how things like that get by unnoticed in the great Hollywood? Other than that great movie. Ben the critic