Henry S. Kesler

(On Cable TV, November 2021) While 5 Steps to Danger may begin as a film noir in the Detour tradition, it soon turns into a cold war thriller when our everyman protagonist becomes involved with a plot to steal American nuclear secrets. Sterling Hayden stars as our likable hero, with Ruth Roman playing what initially looks like a femme fatale, but ultimately becoming not much more than a standard love interest in a lovers-on-the-run suspense film. Writer-director Henry S. Kesler moves his pieces without too much fuss, but 5 Steps to Danger is perhaps best appreciated as a representative first-generation Cold War thriller than a particularly good example of the form. It evokes plenty of other better films, especially when our lead couple goes on the run to find the truth among so many lies and deceptions from Soviet agents. Some sequences still work well — perhaps most notably a confrontation deep inside a military base in which enemy agents are flushed out. The southwestern desert makes for an effective backdrop, but 5 Steps to Danger seems self-limiting in how lazily it uses its own best elements. While the result is still very watchable, there’s little doubt that a better filmmaker would have been able to do much better.