ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959)

In this "last American film noir," Burke (Ed Begley), a fallen NYC cop, brings together Slater (Robert Ryan), a redneck ex-con, and Ingram (Harry Belafonte), a gambler in debt to the Mob, to rob a bank in upstate New York. Most of the first half is devoted to building up personal story lines, and it's good for a while, pitting Slater's racism against Ingram's defiance of it. The acting is excellent all around, which you'd expect from Begley and Ryan; and Belafonte, in only his fourth movie and his first against type, is very sharp. (He produced it, forming his own production company.) Shelly Winters and Gloria Grahame, in tangential roles, also are very good. But, this movie. which was obviously partly modeled on the all-time-great "Asphalt Jungle," comes nowhere near it because violates several sacred precepts of film noir: it's too long for the story line; is too talky at times; has an intrusive jazz soundtrack, and has too many time-wasting scenes that director Robert Wise threw in just to make the movie look "artistic. Believe it or not, Richard Bright, "Al Neri" in the Godfather Trilogy, has a small part as a gay pretty boy on the Mob's payroll.