(Späte Sühne [de])
USA 1947
d: John Cromwell
Columbia Tristar Home Video (Region 2 de)
sc: Gerald Drayson Adams, Sidney Biddell
c: Leo Tover (b/w)
e: Gene Havlick
pd: Stephen Goosson, Rudolph Sternad
m: Hugo Friedhofer, Marlin Skiles; Doris Fisher, Allan Roberts (songs)
p: Sidney Biddell (Columbia Pictures Corporation)
w: Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, Charles Cane, William Prince, Marvin Miller, Wallace Ford, James Bell, George Chandler
pr: 02 Jän 1947
rt: 96:24 (+4%PAL= 100) min
dvd-rl: 21 Jun 2003
ar: 1.33:1 (4:3 Academy Ratio)
sd: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • French Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • German Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono • Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
st: Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
supp: • Vintage advertising gallery (3 pictures)
Faced with the synthetic Scott instead of genuine Bacall, Bogart reacts with a hint of self-parody. Or maybe it's just that the film, cast in flashback form with a guilt-ridden narration by Bogart, tries too hard to maintain its note of doomed noir romance. Excellent hardboiled shenanigans as Bogart's ex-paratrooper sets out with a 'Geronimo!' on his lips to investigate the disappearance of his buddy, uncovering a web of duplicities at the centre of which is the alluringly equivocal Scott. But the relationship never quite convinces, leading to a faintly embarrassing emotional climax as death conjures one last 'Geronimo!' Highly enjoyable all the same.
— TM, Time Out Film Guide
•••••
This is a treat for Bogart fans. He is hardly ever off the screen and even when he is not visible he can be heard in a voice-over narration. Most of the film is a single long flashback in which Bogart describes his search for the murderers of his old Army buddy, a fellow-paratrooper who disappeared on his way to Washington to collect a medal. The plot is very complicated, the dialogue bright if a little over-wordy and the atmosphere subtly sleazy.
— National Film Theatre
•••••
DEAD RECKONING is a prime example of post-WW II film noir, in which the issues are hazy, the hero gropes, and the characters are even more unsavory than the gangsters of the 1930s--as if they were the debris of a war that had claimed the best of humanity. In this case the innocent victim is Prince, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, a noble youth murdered in the polluted backwaters of America.
— TV MovieGuide
