Out of the Past and Against All Odds

Two versions of one story… with a 32 minute difference
By Sam Wiebe

The following is from Sam Wiebe‘s always interesting newsletter (available in free and paid versions, wherein he expounds on writing, crime fiction, film and whatever else catches his attention. Sam, of course, is the award-winning Canadian crime writer and the creator of Vancouver private eyes  Dave Wakeland and Michael Drayton. As Nolan Chase, he writes about Ethan Brand, the  police chief of Blaine, Washington, just south of the Canadian border.

A man is hired to look for another man’s runaway girlfriend. That’s the plot of Jacques Tourneur’s film noir classic Out of the Past, and its 1980s remake Against All Odds. (It’s also the plot of There’s Something About Mary, and probably a lot of other films, too).

Out of the Past stars Robert Mitchum as private eye Jeff Bailey, Kirk Douglas as the gangster shot and robbed by his former mistress, Jane Greer. It’s 97 minutes and every one of them matters.

Directed by Taylor Hackford (Proof of Life), Against All Odds has a similarly great cast, this time with Jeff Bridges as an ex-football player, James Woods as the gangster, and Rachel Ward as a rich girl who dated Woods to piss off her mother, who owns the football team. (The mother is played by Jane Greer). Richard Widmark has a role too large to be called a cameo, and Dorian Harewood plays Woods’s lieutenant. The catchy Phil Collins ballad, written for the film, plays over the credits.

Despite all that, Against All Odds is neither a hidden gem nor a fun fiasco. It’s a 128-minute slog. Comparing the two films offers a valuable lesson in getting to the point.

In Out of the Past, Mitchum is a PI. One of the many charms of a PI story is how straightforward motivation is, at least at the beginning. No setup required: it’s a PI’s job to find the missing person. Simple. Of course, nothing ever stays simple.

But in Against All Odds, Bridges is Terry Brogan, a football player at the end of his career, kind of like Nick Nolte in North Dallas Forty. Aging and beat up, Brogan thinks he still has a few good years left. Only he’s cut because his coach didn’t believe in him, and the team over needs money, and Richard Widmark sees no value in him, so Brogan goes to see James Woods, who offers him money to find his mistress, which Bridges accepts, because he has car and house payments, but then he thinks that if he finds Ward maybe he can talk her mother into getting him back on the team…

This is why screenwriters hate the note “I want to know more about this character.”

None of this adds anything to the story—it fact it bogs it down. Because ultimately we know the story is Bridges in Mexico looking for Rachel Ward, and what will he do when he finds her. All we need is a credible, logical reason to go looking.

One of the reasons why so many film noirs are great, or at least watchable nearly 100 years after their creation, is because they were made on the cheap—the filmmakers didn’t have time or money to piss away. Every foot of film had to serve the story, or it wouldn’t be worth shooting.

This isn’t to say characters shouldn’t have complex and at times conflicting motives. Out of the Past proves this—Mitchum goes from needing money to falling in love to wanting to save his life, all without trusting fulling Greer.

Against All Odds veers away from the violent love triangle into a plot about developers and blackmail. It’s a mistake, because Bridges and Ward have good chemistry and Woods is an A+ villain on his worst day.

Out of the Past focuses on less and means more.

But it doesn’t have that Phil Collins song.

FILMS

• OUT OF THE PAST | Buy this video | Buy on DVD | Buy on Blu-Ray | Watch it now!
  (1947, RKO)
  96 minutes, black & white
  Based on the novel Build My Gallows High by Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring)
  Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring (James M. Cain & Frank Fenton uncredited)
  Directed by Jacques Tourneur
  Director of photography: Nicholas Musuraca
  Starring Robert Mitchum as JEFF “RED” BAILEY
  Also starring Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas, Virginia Huston, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Webb, Dickie Moore
• AGAINST ALL ODDS | Buy this DVD | Buy the Blu-Ray
  (1984, Columbia)
  128 minutes, colour
  Based on the screenplay of Out of the Past by Daniel Mainwaring, and the novel Build My Gallows High by Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring)
  Screenplay by Eric Hughes
  Directed by Taylor Hackford
  Title song “Against All Odds” written and performed by Phil Collins
  Produced by William S. Gilmore, Taylor Hackford
  Associate producer: Bill Borden
  Starring Jeff Bridges as TERRY BROGAN
  Also starring Rachel Ward, James Woods, Jane Greer, Alex Karras, Richard Widmark, Dorian Harewood, Swoosie Kurtz, Saul Rubinek, Pat Corley, Bill McKinney, Allen Williams, Sam Scarber, Kid Creole & the Coconuts