The Narrow Margin (1952)

Synopsis: Richard Fleischer's THE NARROW MARGIN is a subtle film noir from 1952 which picked up Oscar nominations for writers Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard. The story is set on a train running from Chicago to LA. Among the passengers, the former wife of a mobster, Mrs. Frankie Neil (Marie Windsor),... Richard Fleischer's THE NARROW MARGIN is a subtle film noir from 1952 which picked up Oscar nominations for writers Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard. The story is set on a train running from Chicago to LA. Among the passengers, the former wife of a mobster, Mrs. Frankie Neil (Marie Windsor), travels under heavy police protection. The cops assigned to guard her include Walter Brown (Charles McGraw), a hard-bitten sergeant who fends off the attentions of various mobsters on the train who want Neil dead. On her way to LA to testify against her former husband, Neil needs all the protection she can get as the story unfolds. McGraw is well-suited to the role of Brown, as he frequently portrayed cops in films as diverse as Stanley Kramer's comedic IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD and the Fleischer-directed ARMORED CAR ROBBERY. Meanwhile, Windsor plays to type in her role, which neatly follows her chosen career path as the actress-du-jour in many noir movies of the period; the pinnacle of her career came via a turn in Stanley Kubrick's brooding crime-thriller THE KILLING. A mobster picture that draws on all the talents of its excellent cast, THE NARROW MARGIN is an often-unheralded entry into the canon of 1950s crime flicks. [More]