This Cary Grant vehicle was completely unknown to me until today. After reading the plot summary, I tuned in with low expectations, having seen all of Grant's big-ticket productions.
In this vehicle, Grant's character is a prominent US neurosurgeon vacationing with his wife in a Latin American country under martial law. As they prepare to depart, the military abducts the couple and takes them to a town where the president (Jose Ferrer) and his wife are living. The president is dying from an ever-enlarging brain tumor and the Grant character is pressured to operate to save his life. Simultaneously, the political opposition pressures him to allow the president (a tyrant along the lines of Juan Peron) to die.
To my surprise, the story engrossed me as it evolved from its somewhat pedestrian beginning through ever-more detailed, ever-more suspenseful twists and turns -- the pressures brought to bear on the doctor from several sides -- threats, promises, intimidation -- while the doctor attempts to impartially and impersonally fulfill his role as a surgeon.
Part of my surprise has to do with how timely the subject continues to be, even today, long past the time of Peron. The behavior of the dictator and his opposition are clearly evident in different parts of the world even as I write.
In short, this is a film very much worth the hour and three quarters it takes to watch it. .
In this vehicle, Grant's character is a prominent US neurosurgeon vacationing with his wife in a Latin American country under martial law. As they prepare to depart, the military abducts the couple and takes them to a town where the president (Jose Ferrer) and his wife are living. The president is dying from an ever-enlarging brain tumor and the Grant character is pressured to operate to save his life. Simultaneously, the political opposition pressures him to allow the president (a tyrant along the lines of Juan Peron) to die.
To my surprise, the story engrossed me as it evolved from its somewhat pedestrian beginning through ever-more detailed, ever-more suspenseful twists and turns -- the pressures brought to bear on the doctor from several sides -- threats, promises, intimidation -- while the doctor attempts to impartially and impersonally fulfill his role as a surgeon.
Part of my surprise has to do with how timely the subject continues to be, even today, long past the time of Peron. The behavior of the dictator and his opposition are clearly evident in different parts of the world even as I write.
In short, this is a film very much worth the hour and three quarters it takes to watch it. .