Console best movie i've ever seen.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

blanche-2 Robert Taylor had been a familiar face in films for nearly 25 years when he made "Tip on a Dead Jockey" in 1957. Here, he plays Lloyd Tredman, a Korean war pilot who now lives in Madrid doing...well, not much. He is divorced (so he thinks) from his wife Phyllis (Dorothy Malone). However, she never signed the papers and travels to Madrid to find out what happened to their marriage and if there is any way to salvage it.Lloyd admits that he is no longer able to pilot a plane. He is haunted by what he saw in Korea and is now too scared and nervous to fly again. He is the part-owner of a race horse, and is looking forward to winning a lot of money as a result of the race.Before that happens, he is approached by a man who offers him $25,000 to smuggle money out of the country. Lloyd doesn't like it, but he says it all depends on what happens in the race. When the race doesn't turn out as planned, Lloyd is sure that the smuggler had something to do with it. Angry, he refuses to accept the job. Instead, it goes to his close friend Jimmy (Jack Lord). When Jimmy is delayed, his wife (Gia Scala) becomes hysterical, and becomes worse when Jimmy announces he's doing it again! At that point, Lloyd takes over. It's not a smooth trip, with Lloyd almost not able to take off due to being paralyzed from nerves. He finally does, and if anything could happen, it does.This isn't a great movie. It moves slowly and there isn't a lot of action. It's interesting to see Jack Lord pre-Hawaii Five-O, young and with a slightly higher speaking voice and wearing less makeup than he did on his TV show. Dorothy Malone was attractive and good, but the plot is obvious.Taylor, always solid and likable, did six films with director Richard Thorpe. I am a fan of classic films, so I watch him because he is from the golden age, but also because he was my late mother's absolute favorite. He does a good job here.A few words about my mom's favorite guy, after my father, of course. The kid from Nebraska, with his resonant speaking voice and perfect face went on from this film to a successful TV series, "The Detectives," and continued in films until his death from lung cancer at the age of 57, in 1969. Yeah, the cigarettes got most of them.He is somewhat out of favor for testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a friendly witness. However, a new book, Robert Taylor: Reluctant Witness, disputes this. In truth, I don't think he was the sharpest knife in the drawer and probably didn't understand the impact of the committee -- and, like many, he saw Communism as a threat. He claimed to have used bad judgment in accepting the film "Song of Russia." The truth? He did whatever Louis B. Mayer told him to do and wasn't aware that it was making a political statement until someone told him it was pro-Communist. He lived under the umbrella of MGM nearly his entire career and just did what he was assigned.It's not an excuse, and I'm the last one to applaud blacklisting or witch hunts. But everyone who testified had an agenda. Except probably Robert Taylor, who, when he left MGM, didn't know how to make a dinner reservation.

JohnHowardReid A good cast – Robert Taylor, Dorothy Malone, Gia Scala, Martin Gabel, Marcel Dalio, Jack Lord and Joyce Jameson – struggle in a poor screenplay by Charles Lederer, allegedly based on the short story of the same name by Irwin Shaw. I say "allegedly" because Shaw's New Yorker magazine short story is actually a variation on "Casablanca". Aside from the fact that the lead character here is broke, it's very easy to match the players. Thus Taylor has the Bogart role, Gia Scala is Ingrid Bergman, Martin Gabel is Peter Lorre, while Jack Lord impersonates the Paul Henreid character. And needless to say, Irwin Shaw's Bogartian hero is a disillusioned, cynical romantic. In fact, Shaw's story is significantly set in Paris (not Madrid) and is thoroughly suffused with a "Casablanca" atmosphere of disillusionment, as well as being cynical and sharp. Unfortunately, none of this makes it to the M-G-M movie. Instead Tip's plot concentrates on the hero's wife (who is only mentioned in passing in Shaw's story as an ex-wife). The movie is also padded out with a lot of comic relief routines from Marcel Dalio and Joyce Jameson (who are not present in Shaw at all). The only plot elements which actually correspond are our hero's loss of his shirt on a dead jockey and his getting involved in Smith's smuggling racket. The rest of this attempted film noir not only deviates completely from what Shaw wrote , but is totally unlike Shaw in characterization and mood. Reading the story, you are instantly struck by the "Casablanca" parallels, You'd never guess such a connection in a million years with the movie! The picture is tricked out to 98 minutes by means of a lot of dialogue padding. Dorothy Malone's scenes particularly requite quite a lot of trimming. She's also none too flatteringly costumed or photographed. Richard Thorpe's direction, as well as all other credits including Rozsa's music score, rate as strictly routine.

bkoganbing Tip On A Dead Jockey is an average action/adventure film that finds Robert Taylor as an Air Force veteran settled in Spain after he thinks he's gotten a divorce from Dorothy Malone. He's a Korean War pilot group commander who ordered too many men to their deaths and is now just sick of flying. He's living in Madrid with house guest Marcel Dalio and his best friends are fellow Korean war pilot Jack Lord and his wife Gia Scala.It turns out his divorce never went through with Malone so she follows him to Europe to see if she can get her man back. At the same time a rather oily Martin Gabel comes along with a proposition if he'll take a certain package from Cairo to Spain he can receive a handsome amount of cash, enough to clear up his mounting debts.Taylor might need that money as a steeplechase race he had some heavy bets on was lost due to a spill that cost the jockey his life. It's only when Scala puts her foot down on Jack Lord making the run that Taylor does with Dalio along for company.Tip On A Dead Jockey is a strangely introspective action film with Taylor just wanting to retire from life and wanting to leave Malone because he feels she's entitled to the man she married, not who he is now. Dorothy Malone was fresh off an Oscar for Written on the Wind and she was at the height of her career. She's miles from the amoral nymphomaniac she got the Oscar for. But she's also far away from the good girl leading ladies she had played for a decade in any number of B films. Malone gives a good account of herself the woman not taking divorce for an answer. Martin Gabel played mostly oily characters in his film career, so just his first appearance on the screen tells you he's up to no good. Hence there's no real suspense in Tip On A Dead Jockey.Though he gets out of the bind Gabel puts him in, it's a strangely action-less conclusion to the film. Probably it's closer than to what most of us would do in the situation.Tip On A Dead Jockey features some earnest performances by the cast, but the film is not on the best 10 list for any involved.And we never do find out what happened to that jockey.

art_27 A wooden treatment of a shell shocked Korean war vet expatting it in Madrid. Malone barely registers ennui, disillusionment, or any other weight of the world characteristics; he acts more like the suburban dad opting not to shave all weekend. Dalio, the Casablanca croupier, is reduced to playing Malone's colorful sidekick, but a little goes a long way. Jack Lord and his Kennedyesque hairdo go through the motions. Bits of the script, co-written by Shaw, stand out, especially Malone comparing his domestic situation to a Balzac story, "too many people." The title drew me in, and I got a pig in a poke.