Truly Dreadful Film

The greatest movie ever made..!

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The streets of Manhattan take a real beating in this vivid depiction of true events that make the original Dead End Kids and the Jets and Sharks of West Side Story seem trivial. Those two looks at the lives of New York City tough are excellent time capsules but this takes real life and turns it into one of the great social dramas of all time, a true sleeper if there ever was one.Looking at the elevated Metro North near 110th Street (my neighborhood) is a far cry from the location footage in a handful of films using the same shots of the stone underpasses. Shots of all over Manhattan give a dark and eerie look at the harsh world that had most of the country petrified of the image of America that it gave the rest of the world."Hatred has killed my son", the mother of a murdered blind Puerto Rican boy attacked by American hoods exclaims. Accused of pulling a knife, the deceased boy himself is accused of accelerating the crime against him, although it appears that even his own screaming sister didn't make an attempt to pull him into the tenement as the bigoted white teens approached as if they were preparing to slaughter a chicken for dinner. "Take a look. San Juan's polluting the water", one of the monster teens complains before the gang tries to drown a young Puerto Rican boy. The same kid testifies on the behalf of one of them who came to his rescue. Of course, the older Puerto Rican teenagers mistook what he did, and it is only the belief of that white boy's mother (Shelley Winters) that indicates to assistant D.A. Burt Lancaster (her old beau) that he might be innocent.In a major comparison with the song "Gee Officer Krupke", one of the Italian American gang members describes his life much like one of the West side Jets did the same year on film, as did the original novel and original Broadway production of both stories. Each group viciously insults the other with no stone unturned in the hateful racial slurs against each of the other is used.Of course, there is a political subplot with D.A. Edward Andrews hoping for higher office by winning this case, giving the analogy of votes bought by blood rather than promises of justice. Telly Savalas is a rather vicious detective while Dina Merrill plays Lancaster's upper-crust wife who finds the hard way the ugliness of the street. A definite forgotten gem, this is one of the quintessential social horror stories that had been exploding off screen since the end of the second world war. It isn't the artistic triumph of "West Side Story", but it does not sugar-coat anything. This isn't about the Puerto Ricans being made the unwelcome intruders; They are equally presented as young savages as well with clues dropped here and there, adding shocking facts to each of the revelations. A great predecessor to John Frankenheimer's later masterpiece "The Manchurian Candidate", this ends up being just equally as important and for many people who remember these violent years, much more identifiable.

"The Young Savages" is a social-conscience drama showcasing its star, Burt Lancaster, to good effect. Burt plays Hank Bell, a district attorney who is handed the case of three Caucasian youth gang members who murdered a Puerto Rican youth in cold blood. But is that what really happened? As Bell does a lot of his own sleuthing, he discovers, predictably enough, that things may not be as they appeared. He embarks on a bull headed quest for the "truth" of the matter.Bell conducts himself in an unprofessional matter often enough, at least during the climactic trial, that it may lose some viewers due to lack of complete believability. But it's still a reasonably engrossing story, well told by screenwriters Edward Anhalt and J.P. Miller (based on the novel "A Matter of Conviction" by Evan Hunter) and director John Frankenheimer. Frankenheimer doesn't concern himself with being overly cinematic, concentrating mostly on just spinning this racially charged yarn. We are subject to some speechifying and philosophizing on the nature of criminal youth, and the nature of the justice system. For one thing, Hanks' wife Karin (Dina Merrill) is a bleeding heart liberal.The main thing that really holds all of this together is an exceptional cast. Lancaster handles himself with great dignity, playing a character who considers himself fortunate to have escaped slum surroundings (partly due to his father changing the family name, which was actually Bellini). The film co-stars Edward Andrews, Vivian Nathan, Shelley Winters, Larry Gates, Telly Savalas (in his first substantial role), Pilar Seurat, and Milton Selzer, with juicy parts for the younger generation: Stanley Kristien as the defiant Danny, John Davis Chandler as the volatile Arthur, Neil Nephew as the none too bright Anthony, and Luis Arroyo as the passionate Zorro.While not all that satisfying when all is said and done, "The Young Savages" is compelling enough to keep a viewer watching for 103 minutes.Seven out of 10.

As with all Frankenheimer/Lancaster productions, this is a taut story with first-rate acting. But the outlandish courtroom scenes really let it down.Lancaster's district attorney is more the defense than a prosecutor as he paints the boys as poor, misunderstood victims that society drove to stab the Hispanic blind boy. It would be safe to say that his days as a prosecutor would be over. In fact, there might even be disbarment procedures on the horizon.Frankenheimer should also have consulted with some attorneys to see what actually goes on during a trial. For example, the lab report clearing DePace would have been available to the defense as part of discovery, not something that would be sprung by the prosecutor during cross examination. Similarly, the judge arbitrarily changes DePace's charge from murder one to third degree assault during sentencing, after the jury has already come back with a verdict. Did the jury convict on murder or not? This film puts me in mind of the later Birdman of Alcatraz. This is another taut, well-acted F/L effort in which the life of killer Bob Stroud is completely fabricated to make him appear to be a misunderstood innocent beaten down by the prison system, rather than the conscious less sociopath he was in reality. They even went so far as to get the real bird man a special parole hearing. Fortunately, when asked what he would do if he got out, Stroud answered that he'd kill again because there were too many out there who needed killing. Oops, never mind.

BURT LANCASTER takes a lot of physical and verbal abuse from NYC street hoodlums in another gritty version of hero vs. punks from the author of THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE. Blonde beauty DINA MERRILL is his wife whom he accuses of "graduating from Vassar with a degree in sarcasm". As the heroic D.A., Lancaster has the same uphill battle fighting for justice that Glenn Ford had as a schoolteacher in Evan's earlier work.But the problem is there are no new facets to the screenplay. It pretty much covers the same sort of material we've seen countless other times, with all of the incidents leading up to the courtroom climax being less than extraordinary. Some of the courtroom details are well done but overall the effect is more melodramatic than realistic.There are some serious flaws. The performances of the young toughs are often too exaggerated to emerge as truthful and undercut the realism. But Burt Lancaster anchors the story with one of his more restrained portrayals in a role that could easily have been overplayed.As persuasive as he is, he's working in a screenplay that is less than satisfying with regard to the scope and intent of the story. Unfortunately, the hoods come across too often as street tough caricatures and the courtroom conclusion is undercut by some hokey melodramatics.