Movie  1959
 Odds Against Tomorrow      Back      Home
Johnny Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I know I got rid of the headache. Now I got cancer.
Bocco: I'll kill you and everything you own!
Earl Slater: There's only one thing wrong with it.
Dave Burke: What?
Earl Slater: You didn't say nothin about the third man being a nigger!
Earl Slater: I'm off to make my fortune.
Lorry: Aah... what kind of a fortune?
Earl Slater: Just one of those... fortune fortunes.
[after Slater insults Ingram]
Dave Burke: Don't beat out that Civil War jazz here, Slater! We're all in this together, each man equal. And we're taking care of each other. It's one big play, our one and only chance to grab stakes forever. And I don't want to hear what your grandpappy thought on the old farm down in Oklahoma! You got it?
Earl Slater: Well I'm with you, Dave. Like you said, it's just one role of the dice, doesn't matter what color they are. So's they come up seven.
Earl Slater: What you doin' with such a big ol' dog in New York?
Dave Burke: Never had a wife.
Kittie: [after kissing Johnny] That's good. But it was better when you wanted it.
Description
Nerve-snapping tension, gritty style and an unsparing look at racial tension unite in this 'thunderbolt of a film (Los Angeles Examiner) from four-time OscarÂ(r) winner* Robert Wise and writers Abraham Polonsky and Nelson Gidding. Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters and EdBegley deliver 'superb (Hollywood Citizen Herald) performances in this absorbing'taut crime melodrama (Variety). One hundred and fifty thousand dollars, ready for the taking. It's too much to resist for bigoted ex-con Earl Slater (Ryan). He agrees to take part in a bank robbery with former cop Burke (Begley)but hesitates when he finds out that one of his partners (Belafonte) is black. As tensions mount and the men get closer to their biggest score ever, Earl's hatred erupts, resulting in violent consequences for the heist and their lives. *1965: Best Picture, Director, The Sound of Music; 1961: Best Picture, Director (with Jerome Robbins), West Side Story

Amazon.com
After seeing Odds Against Tomorrow, it's hard to understand why Harry Belafonte made so few movies. He's superb as Johnny Ingram, a nightclub singer with a bad gambling debt. To pay it off, he agrees to take part in a bank heist with an ex-cop (the great character actor Ed Begley) and a racist ex-con named Earl Slater, played with consummate bitterness by Robert Ryan. But this isn't a standard crime caper--the movie carefully explores the pressures each man is under. Ingram's debts have begun to threaten his ex-wife and child, while Slater's pride has been eaten away by age and failure; Slater finally has a relationship that matters to him (with Shelley Winters, in one of her wonderful, desperate performances), but not as much as proving himself. As the plan slowly falls into place, the tensions between the men get more extreme until everything falls apart. Gloria Grahame, one of the great B movie femme fatales, has a small but memorable role. Director Robert Wise's long and wildly varied career includes The Haunting, The Sound of Music, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but Odds Against Tomorrow is one of his best. This bleak, powerful movie is considered by many critics and film historians to be the last true film noir, and it's a fitting close to the genre. --Bret Fetzer