(1956)
3
Bruce Eder
A Day of Fury is the kind of movie that helps disprove the myth that all Hollywood features of the 1950s espoused complacency. Along with such earlier Westerns as Henry King's The Gunfighter and Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, and contemporary works such as Anthony Mann's The Tin Star, A Day of Fury is a symbolic plunge into the hypocrisy of its era -- a nasty, disquieting look at middle-class complacency and many of the assumptions behind it. Jock Mahoney makes an excellent hero, a not-too-clever everyman caught between his honest gratitude to a man who may not deserve it and the larger responsibility that he has to his community, whose members may not appreciate (or even deserve) the sacrifices he must make. Dale Robertson, who was about to emerge as a heroic figure in popular culture as the star of the television series Wells Fargo, gives one of the best performances of his career as a genuinely complex villain, by turns daring, bold, and even oddly "upright" in his peculiar way of doing things; he successfully creates the illusion of the larger-than-life presence that comes just short of destroying the community he has entered. Additionally, director Harmon Jones coaxed excellent supporting performances out of Mara Corday, as a woman tragically wronged by the people who profess to want to help her; Jan Merlin as Billy Brand, a teenager with a violent streak; Dee Carroll as Miss Timmons, the dedicated schoolteacher who is unprepared for the way in which Robertson's Jagade tempts her darker side; and John Dehner as the minister who finds his faith demands the ultimate sacrifice.
A Day of Fury on AllMovie
A Day of Fury (1956)
