Suddenly (1954)

United Artists
Directed by Lewis Allen
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Roan Group)

After winning an Academy Award for his role in From Here to Eternity, Sinatra was suddenly relevant after nearly 20 years of essentially playing himself in musical after musical. He goes completely against type in this film, a tense little B-thriller. Sinatra is a hired assassin who holds a family hostage while waiting for the president to arrive by train only a few hundred yards away. Sterling Hayden is rather stiff as the town sheriff, also part of the hostage group. The plot works out rather neatly, perhaps a little too neatly, with character motivations foreshadowed in the early part of the film. Sinatra later had the film withdrawn from circulation after it was revealed Lee Harvey Oswald watched it only days before assassinating JFK.