Pressure Point Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Pressure Point Blu-ray Movie Review

The Defiant One.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 18, 2016

Bobby Darin’s film career wasn’t especially long, lasting just a little over a decade due at least in part to Darin’s untimely death in 1973 at the age of 37. But in the early to mid-sixties, Darin racked up a rather impressive list of acting credits, many of which were noticed by either the Golden Globes or Academy Awards. Darin in fact won the (now discontinued) Most Promising Newcomer — Male Golden Globe for his 1961 appearance in Come September. Darin’s work in 1963's Captain Newman, M.D. garnered him both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, but sandwiched in between these two films was another effort which brought Darin a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama, the Stanley Kramer produced Pressure Point. While Kramer didn’t actually direct this film, it bears many of the hallmarks of a typical Kramer effort, including an earnest, no nonsense approach to potentially touchy subjects like racism, in this case not just the “traditional” black-white schisms that Kramer delved into in such films as The Defiant Ones and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, but a more virulent form of White Power as exemplified by the Nazi movement. In a way, Pressure Point presages another film which offered Sidney Poitier as a kindly counselor, 1965’s Sydney Pollack helmed The Slender Thread, though in this case Poitier portrays a working professional psychiatrist rather than an overwhelmed volunteer at a crisis center. Poitier’s calm patrician manner anchors this film in much the same way it did in the Pollack outing, however, with Darin getting to chew the scenery, at least relatively speaking, as an inmate at a federal penitentiary during the World War II era who has been sentenced for the somewhat unusual crime of sedition. Pressure Point isn’t especially well remembered these days despite its rather impressive pedigree, but it’s a rather interesting film which peels back some of the layers of a fractured personality to explore what exactly fosters such extreme amounts of “racial hatred”.

Pressure Point actually begins with a framing device (directed by Kramer according to the IMDb) in “contemporary” times (meaning the early sixties), where an addled psychiatrist (Peter Falk) laments to his superior, a gray haired Poitier, about his inability to break through to a problematic patient. That leads Poitier to reminisce about his own long ago problems with a similarly incalcitrant patient. (It’s notable that very few of the characters in this film are given names, and so most references to the roles here will be defined by the actors’ names.)

That then leads to the bulk of the film, where a cautious and occasionally contentious cat and mouse game between the doctor (Poitier) and his new patient (Darin) unfolds. The patient is not a stupid man, despite his objectionable political and racial biases, and in fact it’s his very intelligence which seems to set the doctor back on his heels a little bit. When Darin first sees Poitier, he breaks out into a derisive, dismissive laugh, suggesting that no mere black man could ever delve effectively into the mind of someone like him. (The film is a product of its time and typically refers to black people as Negroes.)

The film is probably a bit too facile in its revelations about the long simmering tensions which have informed the patient’s life. A series of flashbacks (within the overall “main” flashback) document a litany of abuses suffered by the patient, and while that perhaps helps the viewer to understand his rebellious, in your face attitude, the whole Nazi and racial angle probably could have used further explication, though of course some would argue that there is no real explanation for hate like this. Part of what ails the film in this regard is the inconsistent way in which the flashbacks are presented, with some being overtly theatrical (basically "bare stages" with a minimum of props) while others are almost hyperbolically cinematic (including a disturbing scene involving the patient as a young boy coming close to murder). Darin does a commendable job in portraying the patient’s vulnerabilities and his steely resilience in the face of questioning, and Poitier’s preternaturally composed demeanor gives the film a certain dignified resonance that its sometimes unseemly focus may not actually deserve.

That somewhat unexpected nobility plays out in the film’s final few moments in the main flashback sequence, when the doctor’s patience (no pun intended) may have finally reached its breaking point, and Poitier gets to deliver a wonderful Krameresque liberal screed about what a “real” America should look like (hint: it doesn’t include racism). The film is undeniably earnest but probably is too melodramatic and pat to ever make its points convincingly. Things aren’t helped by a rather surprisingly florid score by the usually reliable Ernest Gold (Exodus, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World). Perhaps urged in this direction by either Kramer or director Hubert Cornfield, Gold eschews his typical orchestral grandiosity in favor of a jazz inflected score that sounds like recycled Elmer Bernstein or even Quincy Jones, albeit with the unhelpful addition of a theremin.

Pressure Point Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Pressure Point is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. Putting aside a couple of rather brief anomalies (mentioned later in this review), this is one of the nicer looking catalog titles we've had coming from the MGM library lately. While the bookending sequences look just slightly softer than the bulk of the film, and some late stock footage (of those nasty Nazis and other World War II moments) looks pretty ragged, generally speaking detail levels are excellent, offering nice textural views of elements like Poitier's natty tweed jacket or, in one sequence, a kind of weird thatched wall in front of which Darin stands. There's something that looks like some mottling emulsion damage in one sequence starting at circa 31:01 that crawls up the right side of the image intermittently. There are also some very minor nicks and scratches, but surprisingly few given the age of the film. Grain is occasionally pretty coarse looking, especially in some optical effects sequences (see screenshot 11), but resolves naturally throughout the presentation. Black levels are excellent and fans of the film should be generally very well pleased with this transfer.

Pressure Point Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Aside from a bit of shrillness that creeps in courtesy of the theremin utilized in Ernest Gold's score, Pressure Point's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track supports the films somewhat limited sonic ambitions very well. The bulk of the film plays out in relatively intimate dialogue scenes between Poitier and Darin, and the track, while narrow, provides ample support for these spoken interludes. A couple of scenes become relatively more manic, and while there's not a lot of depth here, fidelity is fine and prioritization is also handled well.

Pressure Point Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 2:30)

Pressure Point Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Pressure Point is in some ways a pretty typical Stanley Kramer "message" film, and Kramer probably found no greater "messenger" for his clarion call for racial justice than Sidney Poitier, who in addition to this film also made The Defiant Ones and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with Kramer. The real star here is undeniably Darin, though, and he gives as nuanced a performance as could be expected given the film's somewhat florid sensibilities. The message is undercut a bit here by the at times overly theatrical presentation, but the film is a fascinating curio and Poitier and Darin fans will most likely want to check it out. Technical merits are generally strong, and Pressure Point comes Recommended.