Odds Against Tomorrow |  | Director: Robert Wise
Actors: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $3.98
as of 11/22/2009 22:18 CST details
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Rating:  17 reviews
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 96 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 1005697
ISBN: 0792859057
UPC: 027616899583
EAN: 9780792859055
Theatrical Release Date: October 15, 1959
Release Date: December 2, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Odds Against Tomorrow, a crackling crime caper with an undercurrent of racial tension, combines the desperation of three men--two of whom hate each other--and the culmination of that desperation in the form of a robbery. The film, which includes a fantastic jazz score by pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet, is a film noir gem. David Burke (Ed Begley), a former policeman who once served a |
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Product Description
Odds Against Tomorrow a crackling crime caper with an undercurrent of racial tension combines the desperation of three men--two of whom hate each other--and the culmination of that desperation in the form of a robbery. The film which includes a fantastic jazz score by pianist John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet is a film noir gem. David Burke (Ed Begley) a former policeman who once served a prison sentence has asked bigoted southerner Earl Slater (Robert Ryan) to rob an upstate bank with him promising him $50000 in small bills if the robbery is successful. Burke also recruits Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte who also helped produced the film) a nightclub entertainer who doesn t want the job but who is hopelessly addicted to gambling and is in debt. At first Slater who is supported by his girlfriend Lorry (Shelley Winters) finds out Ingram is black and refuses the job but realizing he needs the money decides after all to join Ingram and Burke in the venture. When they embark on the robbery however all hell breaks loose as danger--and the tension between Ingram and Slater--mount.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 027616899583 Manufacturer No: 1005697
Amazon.com
After seeing Odds Against Tomorrow, it's hard to understand why Harry Belafonte made so few movies. He's superb as Johnny Ingram, a nightclub singer with a bad gambling debt. To pay it off, he agrees to take part in a bank heist with an ex-cop (the great character actor Ed Begley) and a racist ex-con named Earl Slater, played with consummate bitterness by Robert Ryan. But this isn't a standard crime caper--the movie carefully explores the pressures each man is under. Ingram's debts have begun to threaten his ex-wife and child, while Slater's pride has been eaten away by age and failure; Slater finally has a relationship that matters to him (with Shelley Winters, in one of her wonderful, desperate performances), but not as much as proving himself. As the plan slowly falls into place, the tensions between the men get more extreme until everything falls apart. Gloria Grahame, one of the great B movie femme fatales, has a small but memorable role. Director Robert Wise's long and wildly varied career includes The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but Odds Against Tomorrow is one of his best. This bleak, powerful movie is considered by many critics and film historians to be the last true film noir, and it's a fitting close to the genre. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
 loved it but uncertain October 18, 2009
Consumer Type Person (US)
Okay have to say right off best check with other reviewers, consider mine more as a curiosity - most likely I'm incorrect.
From what I've read it's of the "film noir" variety and kind of a commentary / theme on racism-which it is and does.
Where I differ, the filming itself threw my whole take on this movie. Kind of like the "carousel scene" -the kids in the beginning seem to more circle float in. The facial shots / expressions effects. Other things too lighting and angles with the streets and stuff. Very subtle but pretty interesting effects really added to the movie.
Looked more like an aside jazz take on life than anything "noir" or good vs. evil or racism commentary. I love it for that get a kick out of it every time i see it.
BUT - to be on the safe side figure i'm wrong, check other reviews. Treat my review as an idle curiosity, something to try looking for after seeing it a few times. If anyone else sees it great some pretty amazing film work.
If not then fine, it's just like others have described.
 A nostalgic look July 2, 2009
Warner Dakin (Brisbane, Australia)
Odds Against Tomorrow
Not being a real critic, I can only write of my personal reaction after seeing this movie for the first time in 50 years. Being a jazz buff I bought this movie because John Lewis (of the MJQ) wrote the score which included "Skatin in Central Park", and because I remembered it as a good movie and an early use of the zoom lens in movies. I was unaware that it was also considered the last of the Film Noir genre, and I had forgotten Belafonte miming Milt Jackson's vibes solo.
Those elements for which I bought the movie were not nearly as predominant as I remember them, but the movie stood up well in spite of its age, and neither the script nor the acting were cringeworthy. The story moved relentlessly towards its conclusion, and the black and white shots of New York streets added a chill that reinforced my premonition of a disastrous outcome. I realised that I had forgotten the story.
It is an excellent movie and it stands up well in spite of the years, and does so without the assistance of colour, surround sound, digital enhancement or gratuitous violence.
If my "review" is coloured by nostalgia, that is a condition common in those of advanced years and possibly an aid to enjoyment. However I would like to know what younger viewers, seeing it for the first time think of it.
Odds Against Tomorrow June 26, 2007
John Farr
This nail-biting noir features the estimable talents of Ryan, a progressive in real life who plays a noxious bigot to the hilt, and handsome singer-actor Belafonte, showing a decidedly less wholesome side here. Director Wise and writer Abraham Polonsky add complexity to both characters, detailing the gnarled emotions Slater has for well-meaning girlfriend Lorry (Winters) and sexy upstairs neighbor Helen (Gloria Grahame), while depicting Ingram's barely concealed desperation, as he attempts to revive a marriage that's crumbled due to his gambling habits. It's all downhill from there, as everything goes awry on the day of the job. Considered one of the last bona-fide noirs, those in the mood for a tense, intelligent crime caper will like these "Odds."
Cultural Shift May 7, 2007
Douglas Doepke (Claremont CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Watch those early city scenes, they foreshadow a cultural shift then underway. The cool jazz score, the hip sports car, the dominant racial theme-- all suggest the urban chic of the Kennedy years, no longer Eisenhower's small-town middle America. Noir enthusiasts peg this film as the last true noir of the era. Certainly there are the icons: Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Ed Begley, and blacklisted scenarist Abraham Polonsky (Force of Evil; Body and Soul). But it's not classic noir.The usual light and shadow give way to a gritty gray look, the calculated result of winter filming. The bleak landscape is heavy with machinery gone to rust, mirroring the desolation of the plotters as they reach for the big score.
Given the talent involved, the results are surprisingly uneven. Gloria Grahame's role is intriguingly kinky, but dangles like a loose appendage-- a favor to someone I suppose, her looks fading now as quickly as her skills in a badly performed part. Belafonte too looks the part, a frustrated yuppie, yet he deadpans his way through the crucial robbery sequence. And whose idea was that final `message" scene . They should be forced to sit through a hammer blow, the same way as that piece of obviousness slugged the audience. Director Wise's lacklustre pacing doesn't help eirher, draining the film of much needed snap and suspense.
Nonetheless, the film has the great Robert Ryan in a tailor-made part. Who else could smoulder anger or distance alienation better than this gangly near-forgotten performer. The bar scene alone is worth the viewing. Watch the subtle tics flicker across an anguished face as the rage builds. His despairing Old South confederate remains a scary symbol of decades of Jim Crow, not about to give up without a fight. There's also the telling reaction in Begley's apartment after Belafonte comes up with a clever solution. Ryan looks away, the disgust all over a pained visage-- shouldn't it be he, the white man, who solves tricky brain problems. It's just one more frustration for a man emasculated now by a wife earning a living for the two of them. Blacks and women!-- between them, he's dying inside. And underneath it all is the feeling of "the natural order betrayed", a very contemporary grudge that lives on in the likes of call-in radio.
This may not be a very good caper film, nor a very compelling example of film noir. But as a reflection of a society in transition, the powerful sub-texts endure and are well worth a look-see.
 Dated period piece April 27, 2006
Steven Hellerstedt
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
An ex-cop, a chronic loser, and a lounge singer with a serious gambling problem join forces to commit a crime. Ed Begley plays the ex-cop, who is also an ex-con and the mastermind of a robbery planned against a bank in a small city in upstate New York. To pull it off Begley recruits two accomplices. The first is Robert Ryan, an aging, two-bit hood who views the job as his last, best chance to make a big score. Presently he's a `kept' man, tenuously attached to Shelley Winters. The second is Harry Belafonte, a jazz singer whose addiction to the ponies has put him deeply, and dangerously, in debt to Bacco, the local loan shark.
Robert Wise directed the black-and-white ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW on the mean streets of New York City in 1959. The movie is appropriately seedy and run-down looking, a quality that is enhanced by the kool jazz scoring of pianist John Lewis. There's a certain ragged edginess to the look and music which, unfortunately, is undercut when the `message' of the movie hijacks the plot.
You see, Robert Ryan's character is a racist, Belafonte's character has some tolerance issues of his own, and what looks like a juicy heist movie loses itself somewhere along the way, forgets about the crime and turns its attention to its two lead characters. What ought to be five minutes of backstory is brought to the front and consumes most of the movie. Ryan's wife/girlfriend Shelley Winters has a job - he doesn't - and she has afternoons full of housewife-y tasks for him to do. One of which she should have kept off the list was having upstairs neighbor Gloria Grahame come knocking when she needs a baby sitter. Typically Grahame plays the ripely seducible Other Woman, and ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW is not an exception. I'm not complaining. Well, not much, anyway. No actor was better at going from faux charm to sincere menace than Robert Ryan, and Grahame always had a tough fawn quality about her. Their scenes together are very good, but... they feel false, superficial, and melodramatic. The movie really didn't have to keep telling me the many ways Ryan was a creep. At least Belafonte's character, who we spend roughly the same amount of time with, is more three-dimensional. Divorced from his wife yet still a devoted and doting father, his intolerance is more subdued, more reactive, and more understandable.
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW isn't a bad movie, but it's a little too preachy for my tastes. I enjoyed it more as an example of the treatment of race relations in the late `50s than anything else.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 17
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