The Tall Target (1951)

(On Cable TV, November 2022) If nothing else, The Tall Target should be a reminder that Hollywood has a long, long history of making up exciting dramas out of thin historical facts. There is some basis for the fanciful yarn that the film spins—evidence of an assassination plot years before Lincoln’s death, potentially maybe foiled by the Pinkerton Agency (at a time when the Secret Service hadn’t yet been created). Here, we have the aging but still-affable Dick Powell as a Pinkerton agent (named “John Kennedy,” weirdly enough) who comes to believe that there’s an assassin on the train that he’s riding with Lincoln, and starts poking around hoping to take care of the matter. What, in more contemporary films (à la The Commuter, or perhaps more to the point Non-Stop), could have been played as a closed-set thriller here plays as a mostly theatrical production, being soundstage-bound in the same ways as other films of the time. Still, there’s some fun to be had in following the protagonist trying to figure out if there’s an assassin on-board. Perhaps the most enjoyable meta-thing about the film is seeing director Anthony Mann shoehorn noir protagonist Powell, Adolphe Menjou as a villain, and similar bits of very 1950s business in a 1860s train setting. Ruby Dee is wonderful in a too-small role. Otherwise, The Tall Target is not much of a thriller: more like an amiable low-octane drama with a bit of comic relief. Could have been worse, I suppose. And then there’s the whole matter of the other plot to assassinate Lincoln…