Night People

Gregory Peck stars as West Berlin-stationed Army Colonel Steve Van Dyke, whose efforts to free a kidnapped American soldier—whisked into East Berlin—are complicated when the boy's father, an American industrialist (Broderick Crawford)with pull in Washington, flies to Germany to make sure the military does something quick. The blustery businessman thinks he just has to apply the same negotiating skills to swiftly clear things up but the kidnappers (possibly Soviet bloc gangsters) want to exchange their prisoner for an elderly couple who survived Nazi persecution and escaped to the West. Peck's no-nonsense officer decides to show him just how delicate Cold War diplomacy really is. This 1954 espionage thriller gets a glossy treatment in CinemaScope and Technicolor, which unfortunately works against the shadowy atmosphere suggested by the title and the murky morality of the story. Peck is strong and stalwart in the lead, and the film boasts a couple of clever twists, but screenwriter/director Nunnally Johnson fails to generate much in the way of tension or danger. Anita Bjork plays a double agent Van Dyke uses to get messages to the East, Rita Gam is his secretary and lover, and Buddy Ebsen is his folksy colleague. Night People may appeal to Peck fans, but it's a plodding thriller that hasn't aged well. Making its Blu-ray debut in a restored edition, extras include an interview with three of Peck's children. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)