Just perfect...

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

No Way Out was Sidney Poitier's debut film it he sure benefited from beginners luck. Dr. Luther Brooks (Poitier) is an African American doctor who is assigned to treat two white trash robbers in the prison ward, brothers Johnny (Dick Paxton) and Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark). While Luther is tending to Johnny's wounds Biddle jeers at Luther and shouts racial slurs. When Johnny dies of a brain tumor Biddle starts holding Luther responsible because of his ethnicity. Although Luther had no part in Johnny's death, Biddle insists that it was him. Dr. Dan Wharton (Stephen McNally) Luther's superior believes Luther and so do the rest of the hospital staff, but Biddle tells his white trash friends and a big race riot erupts in the city. This overall is a great movie and I highly recommend it. Poitier would prove himself time and time again after this film.

If you like your noir hardboiled and action filled, this may not be the movie for you. But if you can handle a frank and at times abrasive drama about racism and it's social consequences this movie has a lot to offer. At times the good intentions of the director and cast threaten to overshadow the storyline, but there's much to praise about the performances. Especially the antagonism between Poitier and Widmark makes sparks fly,and you keep wondering how this movie ever got made in the first place. Widmark's racism is crude and offensive and would never be put on a movie screen today. When you consider this was made in 1950, it's truly amazing this movie was even considered for production.Hardly a feel-good movie, it failed miserably at the box office. The usual explanation in such cases is that the movie was ahead of it's time, and in this case that's more than true. This is not a movie for couch potatoes, you need to keep your brain switched on for this one, but if you do, you will see a rich, rewarding movie.

This is truly a remarkable, outstanding film dealing with racism at its worst.Richard Widmark, as the racist hoodlum, delivers a walloping performance.By the way, Sidney Poitier, as the black physician who is unfortunate enough to have Widmark's brother die while being examined, is the real star of the movie. While this was his first film, how come in the cast he was placed in the opening credits in the supporting division? They should have at least said and introducing Sidney Poitier as Dr. Brooks.Widmark, the epitome of racism here, is so bigoted that he will not even accept an autopsy result showing that his brother had a brain tumor. AS a result of this, we have a race riot on our hands.Linda Darnell is Widmark's former sister-in-law who comes to realize that such hatred gets one nowhere. I've never seen Darnell so good in a film role.The ending does show us some racial toleration, but it all shows the terrible outcome of racial prejudice. Factors including ignorance bringing about such hatred are vividly shown here.An absolutely fabulous film. Unfortunately, we don't hear much about this movie. We even see levels of institutionalized racism at the hospital where the head doctor, Stephen McNally, is warned that they (the hospital) shouldn't lose funding because a black doctor was involved in the person's demise.

Hollywood, for all its reputation as a bastion of mainstream conservatism, could often be quite a forward-thinking institution. Years before the Civil Rights movement, long before it became trendy or even widely discussed, a major studio could produce an A-feature that dealt candidly and incisively with the issue of race.What is really surprising about No Way Out, is not that it is in an anti-racist picture from the 1950s, but that its attack on racism is incredibly mature. Even into the 1970s pictures that looked directly at race could be woefully patronising and heavy-handed. No Way Out however is clear in presenting the Sidney Poitier character as a central player in the drama who is able to act for himself, rather than having justice handed down to him by charitable white people. It actually pre-empts tokenistic attitudes, with the MD character claiming "If anything I'm pro-Negro", to which Stephen McNally rebukes "I'm just pro-good doctor".But it is not enough to simply make statements for equal ability – it is equally important to show it, and this is where Sidney Poitier comes in. With his calm, professional manner – the very antithesis of the servile stereotypes you see in 1930s cinema – Poitier makes a mockery of white supremecism. He takes the character beyond being a token black doctor dreamt up for the purposes of an anti-racist drama, and presents him as a doctor first and foremost. This was Poitier's first credited role, and although he still has a way to go he is clearly an actor to be reckoned with, showing all the powerful expressiveness in his face that would always be his best asset. It's rather neat that Poitier's antagonist here is Richard Widmark. Widmark makes his character utterly odious, often hysterical, yet still recognisably human. He is Poitier's opposite in every way, yet both actors have such a great depth and naturalism that they make perfect co-stars.But No Way Out is more than just an intellectual sermon. It is also a taut and gripping thriller. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz had recently won Oscars for writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives, and was about to pull off the same trick this year with All About Eve. No Way Out is a slightly simpler job than those other pictures, and does not feature quite the same detail to visual information that was Mankiewicz's forte. Instead, he appears to have focused more on pacing. Many of the simple exposition scenes move at a speedy lick, with actors travelling from room to room as they talk, and shots beginning and ending with movement. This has the duel purpose of stopping these scenes being too static, and at once establishing a frantic, unsettled atmosphere. But here and there these hurried sequences give way to scenes of slow drawn-out tension, in which Mankiewicz ekes out a sense of danger with the power of suggestion, often in simple set-ups and long takes.And this brings us onto what is perhaps the most refreshing thing about No Way Out. It is not just that this is a thought-provoking anti-racist drama which engages its audience. It is the fact that a black actor could play a lead role in such a serious picture, on equal footing (if not billing) with his white co-stars. Granted, much of the plot is revealed through the eyes of Linda Darnell's character, especially in the latter half of the film, identification with a female lead being very much a Mankiewicz trademark. However Sidney Poitier is not the object or the catalyst or the victim of the story – he is the hero of No Way Out.