Aldo Ray

Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round

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A smiling James Coburn

James Coburn’s time as an A list star lasted only… how long? A year? Three? 1966’s Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round is emblematic of the series of films that took Coburn to the top rung and then pulled him off it again. Key exhibit here is Our Man Flint, also from 1966 – a bona-fide hit giving him a star vehicle after having been eye-catching in other people’s films – The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape and Charade to name but three. Dead Heat was not a hit but it didn’t stop Coburn returning to the comedy caper teat again and again, milking it dry with successive films – In Like Flint, Waterhole Three, … Read more

Men in War

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James Edwards and Robert Ryan

A “lost patrol” war movie, 1957’s Men in War shows that director Anthony Mann was as expert in this genre as he had already proved himself to be in film noir (Raw Deal), the western (Winchester ’73) and the epic (Quo Vadis). Made without any buy-in from the US military, it’s a pared-back affair and Mann uses the lack of budget to good effect, relying on key performances from his two leads to deliver the goods. There are two different types of human endeavour on display in Men in War – the social and the individual. Robert Ryan plays the fiercely egalitarian lieutenant in charge of a platoon trying to make its way … Read more