I'm really not understanding why folks are so down on this film. Hurry Sundown
is far from the masterpiece of Otto Preminger's career. But he did assemble a
good cast who as an ensemble do quite well in their roles.
Michael Caine and John Philip Law are cousins. Caine used to work on a shrimp
boat but married into southern gentry when he wed Jane Fonda. He's now trying
to be a big shot businessman putting together parcels of land. Only two won't
sell out Law and black neighbor Robert Hooks.
Law has just returned from World War 2 to wife Faye Dunaway and their kids.
The war has taken him away from the south and given him an itch to wonder.
He might sell, but Caine relies too much on the blood connection and approaches him all wrong.
Law does the unheard of thing in the post World War 2 south, he partners with
Hooks and they dig some needed irrigation ditches using explosives.
That sets off all that follows because law and with some trepidation goes into
a partnership with a black man. Something that just wasn't done in Georgia
of 1946.
Both Fonda and Dunaway are ravishing and both are coming into their own as
name players. Caine follows in the tradition of British actors playing southerners that seems to have started with Leslie Howard and Gone With The
Wind. Law is the key character in this drama, it's his decisions are what turn
the plot and he runs a good range of emotions doing it.
Hurry Sundown is not a bad picture of the south just before the civil rights
revolution. Believe me pay no attentions to the bad reviews.