I remember seeing The Naked Runner in theater when it came out and it holds a unique place in the annals of Frank Sinatra's career. Frank had been in some bad films before and would be again. But The Naked Runner is the only one I can say is downright dull. That's something I never thought possible.
Sinatra plays an American industrialist and widower with a son, Michael Newport in school in the United Kingdom. During the war he was an intelligence man and British intelligence thinks he'd just be ideal for an assassination they have in mind.
To insure his cooperation Newport is kidnapped and the rest of the film is will Frank or won't he do the mission thrust upon him.
The Naked Runner is a dull actionless film devoid of any kind of interest. Sinatra is just not good at cerebral type acting. But I guess he made one effort more to show he could do a film without the Sinatra hipster like persona.
In the just published book the second of James Kaplan's massive two volume biography of Frank Sinatra, we learn that Sinatra who left location shooting in Copenhagen to help out with Pat Brown's unsuccessful re-election campaign in California left word to close down production in Denmark and that he would shoot whatever else was needed in California. Instead producer Brad Dexter opted to shoot around Sinatra and send the product on to the studio. This is most likely the reason why at times it's incomprehensible.
Dexter had become part of Sinatra's entourage a few years back saving him from drowning in Hawaii where they were shooting None But The Brave. This act of independence ended his Sinatra association which Dexter didn't regret. But the film became a sorry mess.
Not even the most devoted Sinatra fan will like this one.
Sinatra plays an American industrialist and widower with a son, Michael Newport in school in the United Kingdom. During the war he was an intelligence man and British intelligence thinks he'd just be ideal for an assassination they have in mind.
To insure his cooperation Newport is kidnapped and the rest of the film is will Frank or won't he do the mission thrust upon him.
The Naked Runner is a dull actionless film devoid of any kind of interest. Sinatra is just not good at cerebral type acting. But I guess he made one effort more to show he could do a film without the Sinatra hipster like persona.
In the just published book the second of James Kaplan's massive two volume biography of Frank Sinatra, we learn that Sinatra who left location shooting in Copenhagen to help out with Pat Brown's unsuccessful re-election campaign in California left word to close down production in Denmark and that he would shoot whatever else was needed in California. Instead producer Brad Dexter opted to shoot around Sinatra and send the product on to the studio. This is most likely the reason why at times it's incomprehensible.
Dexter had become part of Sinatra's entourage a few years back saving him from drowning in Hawaii where they were shooting None But The Brave. This act of independence ended his Sinatra association which Dexter didn't regret. But the film became a sorry mess.
Not even the most devoted Sinatra fan will like this one.