Boomerang! (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Boomerang! (1947) – E. Kazan

From the producer of “The March of Time” comes this police procedural cum courtroom drama cum righteous social justice proclamation, directed by Elia Kazan.  Kazan famously named names to McCarthy’s HUAC, so he knew a thing or two about moral decision-making and the stresses upon it.  But here in the mid-to-late ‘40s, he can’t make up his mind about whether we the people need to be protected from the government (corrupt) or the mob (able to be galvanized to hate).  Indeed, it falls to local District Attorney Dana Andrews to choose whether to indict a possibly innocent man (for the murder of a beloved priest) and score political points that might put him in the governor’s office or to do the right thing by him.  Richard Murphy’s Oscar-nominated screenplay succeeds in showing the political context surrounding the work of both the police and the D. A.’s office and heaps as much pressure as possible on Andrews (who is good at showing this kind of stress – see his work in Fritz Lang’s films).  Lee J. Cobb glowers in support and Arthur Kennedy is good as the accused. This all leads to a theatrical and very sudden conclusion that makes you feel better about justice than you should be feeling given the state of the world in 2015.