Split Second (1953) Movie Review, Cast & Crew, Film Summary

Atom-age variation on the Petrified Forest-type gangster-takes-hostages tale. Stephen McNally plays the icy villain who realises the perfect place to hide out from the police is an old mining town – which will be consumed at dawn by the fireball of an atom bomb test. Along the way his partner cops a bullet in the belly, and he collects a motely selection of types – square-jawed but remarkably useless journalist Keith Andes, grizzled prospector Arthur Hunnicutt, dance-hall floozy Jan Sterling, high society floozy Alexis Smith and her dopey paramour Robert Paige. McNally gets the brilliant idea of calling up Smith’s soon-to-be-ex-husband Doctor Richard Egan to come and save his beloved by operating on the wounded criminal. Dick Powell directs to much effect: if the story is cliched, the by-play between the various characters, especially the warped Smith-Egan-McNally triangle, is gripping, and the finale when everyone flees the bomb blast is a brilliant sequence. It’s a delightfully portentous line the aggrieved Egan mutters: “Let’s see what the world of tomorrow looks like”, before they ascend to a desert reigned over by a mushroom cloud.