Well, allegedly Abraham Lincoln DID have to cancel his inaugurational speech due to a plot to assassinate him, but not quite the way it's planned in this fictionalized movie. Dick Powell stars as a policeman who (doing his best to pretend he wants to be in this movie) somehow gets involved in this secret plot to kill Lincoln. It's never explained why the man ends up dead on the caboose of the train (did he come across the plot himself, or just maybe could he have had a heart attack?), the person in car 27, connected to the death, is SO OBVIOUS, you'd have to be an infant not to guess it. HINT--a gunshot in a smoke-filled scene gives it away. Anyways, after about halfway through, the plot thickens from paper-thin to cardboard thin when Powell is suspected of being an imposter and must not only escape from the clutches of the law just in time to catch the train, save the president, and clear his name of all wrong doing, but has to pay a little kid to keep silent. That I thought was demeaning, but not so ridiculous as the bullet that makes a hole in a newspaper covering a man's face, but not into the skull of the man's head. Overall, and I know it seems like it's the worst film I've seen, it keeps you interested, but you must wade through cliches and unexplained activity to get there. ** out of **** C grade.
Review of The Tall Target
