The Tall Target

In February 1861 a New York policeman receives word that the president-elect will be killed in Baltimore. Nobody listens; his superiors tell him to drop it. He resigns and boards a train. That train, running on the line the president will travel, is where nearly all of the film takes place. The subject is not the assassination but nobody being able to tell who anyone is. Everyone on the train is a stranger; a conductor, a soldier, a southern family and a man concealing his identity share the same carriage. The policeman is looking both for the assassin and for someone who will believe him. The form is entirely enclosed. Narrow corridors, small compartments, gaslight. Anthony Mann uses the movement inside the train as a labyrinth and the outside is seen only through windows. The source is historical: a claimed plot in Baltimore in 1861 was genuinely raised and the president's journey was altered for security. How much of it was really a plan is still argued over, and the film turns that uncertainty into fiction. Dick Powell plays the policeman, Adolphe Menjou a colonel and Paula Raymond the woman on the train. The strand concerning a young enslaved woman is handled unexpectedly directly for the period. Who it is for: viewers who like enclosed thrillers and historical crime films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a broad canvas; the film stays almost entirely inside one train.