United Artists
Directed by Howard W. Koch
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, MGM Limited Edition Collection)
Charles Bronson, Broderick Crawford, Lon Chaney, William Talman and Ralph Meeker as the "Ice Man", a sadistic kidnapper and murderer, compose the dream cast of character actors in this violent film. Meeker grabs an asthmatic kid who gets lost near the Royal Gorge in Colorado. The kid falls and gets hurt, but instead of helping him he just tosses him over a cliff. He is eventually sent to prison for extortion, but the body is never found. Nonetheless, his cell mates despise him for being a "kid killer". They force him to join their jailbreak from an Alcatraz-like island prison. On the outside, they all kill each other in double crosses to get the ransom money that Meeker has hidden in the mountains. Droll narration from a pursuing FBI agent really hurts the tension, and it can't quite escape its B-movie origins.
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