There’s one thing today’s journalists can’t do with a computer, and that’s light a match as a typewriter slides back into place. It’s the way Chuck Tatum does it in “Ace in the Hole,” a terrific, Old Hollywood critique of the press in a grizzly, bitter noir.
Kirk Douglas plays Tatum as a smarmy, cutthroat reporter with attitude and condescending wit to his editor at the small Albuquerque newspaper, despite coming to him after being fired by a dozen newspapers on the other side of the Mississippi. Tatum craves a vicious cycle of “if it bleeds, it leads” journalism, and his belief is that one big story will break him out of New Mexico and back onto the East Coast.
He finally catches his break when a man gets trapped in a cave-in just outside a small Native American town. Tatum finds the man deep inside the cave. He says his name is Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), and he’s thrilled that not only is someone going to rescue him, he’s going to be in the paper too. Tatum plays up the angle that Minosa is trapped in an Indian burial ground, he bribes the local authorities for exclusive access, he forces Minosa’s wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) to stay and lap up the luxury that’s about to come in the media firestorm, and he even persuades the foreman to use an elaborate, slow and inefficient way to dig out Minosa. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Ace in the Hole”