The Tall Target

Anthony Mann returns to historical noir with The Tall Target (1951), an excellent thriller based on the 1861 Baltimore Plot to kill Abraham Lincoln. Presaging The Day of the Jackal and Valkyrie, Mann crafts an assassination film where the outcome is predetermined; the interest lies not with the assassins' chance of success, but how they'll be stopped.

New York Police Sergeant John Kennedy (Dick Powell) discovers that President-elect Abraham Lincoln is the target of an assassination plot by pro-Southern citizens of Baltimore. Unfortunately, Kennedy's superiors don't believe him, so he takes it upon himself to foil the plot. Kennedy boards a Baltimore and Ohio flyer full of suspicious characters: a shifty stranger (Leif Erickson) who tries to impersonate Kennedy, a Southern West Point dropout (Marshall Thompson) planning to join the Confederate Army, a Union Colonel (Adolphe Menjou) who's not what he seems. Kennedy himself is targeted by the assassins, who try to frame him for murder before the train reaches Baltimore - and before Lincoln can be warned.

The Tall Target is a taut little thriller that zips along at a brisk pace. The plot is riveting from the word go, with Kennedy facing a forbidding gallery of antagonists. Many of Kennedy's fellow passengers openly declare that they want Lincoln dead, and the Sergeant has his work cut out for him just determining the scope of the plot, let alone stopping it. Writers George Worthing Yates, Art Cohn and Geoffrey Cohn craft a twisting deliciously complex plot keeps the audience on the edge of their seat, with the biggest plot twist coming offscreen. Mann's typically stylish direction, Paul Vogel's forbidding photography and a vividly rendered cast bring this story to life.

Dick Powell is excellent as the tough, grimly determined Kennedy. The supporting cast is equally solid. Adolphe Menjou (Paths of Glory) and Marshall Thompson (Battleground) are suitably devious as the plot's ringleaders, and Leif Erickson (On the Waterfront) gets a choice bit as a sleazy impostor. Ruby Dee (Cat People) shines as a helpful, quietly rebellious slave. Paula Raymond's (Devil's Doorway) feisty soldier's wife and Florence Bates's (Rebecca) arrogant abolitionist are also vividly rendered. Will Geer (In Cold Blood) and Victor Kilian (Abe Lincoln in Illinois) provide some light comic relief as the train's conductor and engineer.

The Tall Target is a superb historical thriller. It doesn't quite match the brilliance of Mann's earlier Reign of Terror, but it's still a solid film that's highly recommended.