"Boomerang!" features an exceptional cast of actors who might not be pretty but who really knew their craft. Think about it...Dana Andrews, Ed Begley, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, Arthur Kennedy and Robert Keith all in one film. You can't help but enjoy watching the film simply so you can get a chance to watch these wonderful but generally unheralded actors exercise their craft. And, with Elia Kazan directing, you can't help but expect excellence.
The film begins with a seemingly senseless murder. A beloved priest is shot in the back of the head, execution-style, on the street of a Connecticut town. The killer, dressed in a trench coat and hat, manages to get away and the town is clamoring for the police to catch him. In fact, the local paper pushes hard, very hard, for the police to act. And, as a result, it seems that the authorities try too hard to catch someone...anyone. The man they eventually catch (Arthur Kennedy) does give an inconsistent story but there really isn't much to connect him to the murder other than several eyewitnesses.
When the District Attorney (Dana Andrews) gets the case, something bothers him. While everyone around him seems pleased about the arrest, he can't get past the fact that the evidence is tenuous--very tenuous. In fact, instead of prosecuting the case as you'd expect, Andrews manages to systematically prove the eyewitnesses were not the least bit reliable. They, too, were in a rush to judgment or had personal reasons to say Kennedy was the killer. And, following his impeachment of the witnesses, he is able to tear apart his own case--proving the defendant could not have been the assailant.
While the idea of a prosecuting attorney working hard in court to DISPROVE his case sounds insane, it is supposedly based on a real case. And it also proves just how horrible eyewitness accounts can be--often VERY unreliable and subject to lots of human error. It has a great point to make AND is quite entertaining and well constructed. Well worth seeing.
The film begins with a seemingly senseless murder. A beloved priest is shot in the back of the head, execution-style, on the street of a Connecticut town. The killer, dressed in a trench coat and hat, manages to get away and the town is clamoring for the police to catch him. In fact, the local paper pushes hard, very hard, for the police to act. And, as a result, it seems that the authorities try too hard to catch someone...anyone. The man they eventually catch (Arthur Kennedy) does give an inconsistent story but there really isn't much to connect him to the murder other than several eyewitnesses.
When the District Attorney (Dana Andrews) gets the case, something bothers him. While everyone around him seems pleased about the arrest, he can't get past the fact that the evidence is tenuous--very tenuous. In fact, instead of prosecuting the case as you'd expect, Andrews manages to systematically prove the eyewitnesses were not the least bit reliable. They, too, were in a rush to judgment or had personal reasons to say Kennedy was the killer. And, following his impeachment of the witnesses, he is able to tear apart his own case--proving the defendant could not have been the assailant.
While the idea of a prosecuting attorney working hard in court to DISPROVE his case sounds insane, it is supposedly based on a real case. And it also proves just how horrible eyewitness accounts can be--often VERY unreliable and subject to lots of human error. It has a great point to make AND is quite entertaining and well constructed. Well worth seeing.