Cinema: The New Pictures, Oct. 26, 1959

Odds Against Tomorrow (HarBel;

United Artists) is a thriller that makes a peculiar plea for racial integration in the underworld. The hero (Harry Belafonte, who is also the producer) is a singer in a Harlem hotspot who signs on for a bank robbery to pay off his bookie. Unhappily, once he is in, he discovers that another member of the gang is a paranoid punk from Oklahoma (Robert Ryan) who would sooner risk the bundle than his sense of white supremacy. The punk calls the Negro "Brother Bones," and warns him not to "crap out" on the job. "Ah been handlin' [Negroes]...

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