I love this movie so much

Why so much hype?

Boring, long, and too preachy.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

In Mexico, Helen (Barbara Stanwyck) and Doug Stilwin (Barry Sullivan) are driving down the desolate Baja California with their young son Bobby. He has brought along his gun from the Army. Doug gets trapped by falling piling and has only a few hours before incoming tides drown him. Helen drives off in search for help. She finds Lawson (Ralph Meeker) but he's actually a murderous escaped convict.Director John Sturges constructs a pulpy thriller from this simple story of wide-eyed Americans caught up in a dangerous foreign land. It's a slow build at first. Sturges lays down little ominous nuggets along the way. He raises the tension at very spot. I love the Mexican peasants. Stanwyck is always capable of making that turn. This may not be a classic but there is real skills at work here in this high level B-movie.

***SPOILERS*** While on a trip down Mexico way the Stilwins Helen Dough & Little Bobby, Barbara Stanwyck Berry Sullivan & Lee Aker, come upon this deserted little fishing village where little Bobby ends up getting his foot stuck on the pier. That while going fishing and checking out the scenic Gulf of Mexico. With his concerned father Dough going out to rescue him the pier, that was rotten to the core, collapse and parts of it lands on his leg pinning Dough to the ground with high tide about four hours away soon to engulf and drown him.It's Helen who takes off in the family car to get help but her not understanding Spanish in explaining the situation to the native Mexicans doesn't help her at all. It's then right out of nowhere that this man Lawson or convict #6105, Ralph Meeker, suddenly appears and offers to help. It turns out that this "Lawson" is anything but "Law" abiding in taking Helen hostage and threatens to murder her if she as much as opens her mouth to the police that have the area roads blocked. It turns out that He just escaped from prison and in fact murdered the owner of the hardware store that Helen went to get a rope to save her husband Dough from drowning.It's then what turned out to be a strange cat and mouse game between both Lawson and Helen in both trying to escape the local police and at the same time save Helen's husbands life. In the end , after Helen tried to brain with a lead pipe, Lawson finally agrees to help save Dough as well as Bobby's lives at the expense of him getting captured by the Mexican police and even facing a firing squad for his actions. Why Lawson did this is never explained since he had no love for Helen after all then she did to him and in return, in him smacking her around, what he did to her.***SPOILERS*** All of a sudden Lawson turned into a genuine good guy doing everything he could to save Dough's life and in the end succeeding in it while the Mexican police, one of which ended up crushed under his squad car, were out to arrest him. The films completely off the wall ending,this in 1953 with the Hollywood strict system of crime does not pay endings, has Lawson get away Scot-free with the help of Helen, one of his victims, giving him cover. That is about the only fact that makes the film both watchable and an oddity of the time that it was released.

Stanwyck gives it all she can give but it appeared to me that she wasn't exactly comfortable around the little boy who played her son.What a vacation is in store for her, husband Barry Sullivan, who gets trapped below a chunk of wood, and her young son.On her way to get help, Stanwyck encounters Ralph Meeker, a convict who broke from prison and is running. He immediately takes her hostage before she finally convinces him to come back with her to aid her drowning husband.The film tries to show that there is some good in anyone as Meeker desperately tries to free Sullivan and ultimately does, before he runs away from oncoming police cars. Stanwyck states that we'll ultimately read of his capture or demise as this 69 minute film ends. In reality, there is ultra-liberal hog wash shown here.

Jeopardy has the feel of being a stock movie of sorts - one of the movies that the studios pumped out inbetween big budget/box office ones. It's a mere 70 minutes and doesn't feature many sets, and the only star is Barbara Stanwyck. But what a star, of course. Stanwyck is a tough lady once again as she runs into an escaped convict while seeking help for her trapped husband in the Mexican desert. The majority of the movie is focused on how she deals with her captor, who wants her to submit to him in exchange for his help. Some psychological battling there. It's a surprisingly effective little movie - its short length makes it taut, and that Stanwyck is great should go without mention (but I'll still praise her every time).