Ace in the Hole

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Rarely is the press portrayed in a positive light in movies. There are rare exceptions, such as "All the President's Men," but more often the press is portrayed as a business and not a service (see: "Network"). The press has largely brought this on itself. You need look no further than today's 24/7 cable news channels or the people grabbing "People Magazine" at the gym. Lest you think this is a recent phenomenon, think again. A case and point: "Ace in the Hole."

The movie revolves around a reporter named Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), a man who has been fired from basically every major newspaper market. One day his car breaks down in Albuquerque, and he weasels his way onto a local paper. A year passes and he is still stuck there and feels his career is going nowhere. He gets sent to small town to cover a rattlesnake competition and along the way stops off in a small desert town. Why? The owner of the local trading post is trapped in a silver mine. Not only that, the mine is an Indian burial ground. Tatum then concocts a story about a mummy's curse. This is just one of many examples of sensational journalism portrayed in this movie. Tatum makes sure Leo Mendosa, the man trapped in the mine, is rescued in a way that will take several days rather than the way that will take a few days. After all, he wants his fifteen minutes of fame. He manages to control the sheriff, access to the story, and access to the trapped man's wife. In fact, he slaps her when she tells him she plans to take a bus out of town. The juicy story needs a grieving widow too.

The whole movie is a portrait of what has become the sensational tabloid journalism that pollutes the airwaves today. Director Billy Wilder was way ahead of his time with "Ace in the Hole." It came on the heels of "Sunset Boulevard," and yet it flopped when it was released in 1951. While a well-made and well-acted movie (Kirk Douglas is wonderfully fierce in the lead role) I somehow felt the movie was lacking something. The commentary on modern media is compelling, but the movie drags in places and I wished there had been more character development, especially of the sheriff and Mendosa's widow. It has some good lines of dialogue, but the overall screenplay is not as sharp as some of Wilder's other great movies ("Sunset Boulevard," "Double Indemnity," etc.). "Ace in the Hole" is worth seeing mostly because of Kirk Douglas and its sharp social commentary, but it doesn't meet my criteria for a "great movie." Fortunately there will be many other Billy Wilder movies to watch in this exercise and I have no doubt more than one will meet my standards.