"Narrow Margin" is a very enjoyable film, good acting all around. The direction keeps the plot moving. There's lots of tension: who is a villain in disguise; who is really what he or she seems to be? That's the virtue of the movie. It's also the downfall. It relies on its twisty plot to keep us guessing. I admit I did not anticipate that the supposed State's witness (Marie Windsor) was really an undercover policewoman. And I did suspect that the railroad dick was a member of the mobsters' gang, even after he identified himself; the mob can corrupt a railroad worker as easily as anyone else. But, when a story relies on cleverness to pull the viewer through, it ought to be sure that it is hermetically sealed - no holes in the plot that leave one annoyed or baffled.
I don't mean to be picky. I can overlook incongruities or improbabilities in a clever story. I've read Charles Dickens. "Egad, Mr. Jaggers, you mean Estella, whom I have loved from boyhood, is really the daughter of the convict I just happened to befriend, by an incredible chance, 350 pages ago and who now is revealed as my secret benefactor?" I wink at that, no problem. But here the plot twist is not implausible, it's impossible, or really twice over impossible.
Number one. We are told that the undercover policewoman's mission is to mislead the inevitable assassins and also to test out the other cops, to see whether they will betray her for a bribe. She works for the Internal Affairs division. How could the police department, her superiors, possibly have left her alone in that situation? There is absolutely no backup law enforcement on the train. What if Charles McGraw and/or his partner (no one could have anticipated he would be killed early on) had indeed succumbed to temptation? What if they failed the honesty test? Then she's a dead duck. Not possible.
Second hole. OK, by a lucky chance our undercover officer survives the test. But she knows she is still the target of a desperate gang of assassins who will kill her if they can only find her. Presumably she is a trained police operative. Why, oh why, does she keep playing her phonograph at full volume in a supposedly empty room? Is she suicidal? She does it even after she is warned - something anyone with an ounce of common sense wouldn't do. Sure enough, the bad guys hear the record-player and liquidate their target.
Holes are not unpluggable. In "War of the Worlds" (the novel), for instance, there is a huge hole, but H.G. Wells was clever enough to plug it. Why do the Martians, who are supposedly a million times more advanced than we poor earthlings, not realize that one cannot casually breathe in the atmosphere of an alien world and not run the risk of contracting a fatal alien disease? He explains it by speculating that the atmosphere of Mars contains no microbes, so the thought would not have occurred to its denizens. Here the screenwriters don't suggest any plugs. The flaws keep rankling around. If it weren't a story that goes out of its way to be clever, like "The Lady Vanishes" it wouldn't be so irritating. But it is irritating.
I don't mean to be picky. I can overlook incongruities or improbabilities in a clever story. I've read Charles Dickens. "Egad, Mr. Jaggers, you mean Estella, whom I have loved from boyhood, is really the daughter of the convict I just happened to befriend, by an incredible chance, 350 pages ago and who now is revealed as my secret benefactor?" I wink at that, no problem. But here the plot twist is not implausible, it's impossible, or really twice over impossible.
Number one. We are told that the undercover policewoman's mission is to mislead the inevitable assassins and also to test out the other cops, to see whether they will betray her for a bribe. She works for the Internal Affairs division. How could the police department, her superiors, possibly have left her alone in that situation? There is absolutely no backup law enforcement on the train. What if Charles McGraw and/or his partner (no one could have anticipated he would be killed early on) had indeed succumbed to temptation? What if they failed the honesty test? Then she's a dead duck. Not possible.
Second hole. OK, by a lucky chance our undercover officer survives the test. But she knows she is still the target of a desperate gang of assassins who will kill her if they can only find her. Presumably she is a trained police operative. Why, oh why, does she keep playing her phonograph at full volume in a supposedly empty room? Is she suicidal? She does it even after she is warned - something anyone with an ounce of common sense wouldn't do. Sure enough, the bad guys hear the record-player and liquidate their target.
Holes are not unpluggable. In "War of the Worlds" (the novel), for instance, there is a huge hole, but H.G. Wells was clever enough to plug it. Why do the Martians, who are supposedly a million times more advanced than we poor earthlings, not realize that one cannot casually breathe in the atmosphere of an alien world and not run the risk of contracting a fatal alien disease? He explains it by speculating that the atmosphere of Mars contains no microbes, so the thought would not have occurred to its denizens. Here the screenwriters don't suggest any plugs. The flaws keep rankling around. If it weren't a story that goes out of its way to be clever, like "The Lady Vanishes" it wouldn't be so irritating. But it is irritating.