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Poitier), chained together at the wrist, are the only two to escape when a prison truck cracks up in a ditch. Linked but loathing, they stumble through swampland, nearly drown fording a river, nearly wrench their arms from their sockets clawing out of a deep clay pit. When they pause, it is not to rest but to spit forth their hatred. Telling Poitier why he is a "nigger," Curtis says: "It's like callin' a spade a spade. I'm a hunky. I don't try to argue out of it." Replies Actor Poitier: "You ever hear tell of a bohunk in a woodpile, Joker? You ever hear tell of 'catch a bohunk by the toe'?"
A farm boy happens upon them, leads them back to the burrow where he and his deserted mother (Cara Williams) live. The woman helps them smash the chain, spends the night with Joker Jackson, and persuades him to flee with her while Cullen heads overland to hop a northbound freight. In a scene that would be the worst sort of corn if the script faltered, Curtis learns that the woman has directed Poitier through a quicksand bog. Their painfully borne chain, even broken, has bound them irrevocably together, and Curtis plunges after him to sure capture by the law. Behind the coupled heroes, the moviemakers have sketched a mud-grimed tableau of the blood-happy townsmen giving chase and a soul-weary sheriff—played to sunken-eyed, raspy-throated perfection by Theodore Bikel. If Sidney Poitier's wild-eyed, bare-fanged portrayal of Cullen is overwrought, it has at least prodded Teen-Agitator Curtis into the first performance of his career that will incline the old folks to a modest whoop.
The Hunters (20th Century-Fox) was made with "the cooperation of the Defense Department and the U.S. Air Force," who obviously hope that moviegoers will smile tolerantly at the story and concentrate on admiring the zooming jets. Bob Mitchum plays a Korean war fighter pilot who falls in love with his wingman's wife. The triangle could hardly be less isosceles.
The long-suffering wingman is Lee Philips, whose fear of combat has led him to booze his way into his wife's disaffections. He gets popped by a North Korean MIG, bails out over enemy territory. Mitchum, of course, has only to scoot home and catch a quick shower in order to nest down with the missing flyer's spouse (May Britt). Instead, the red-blooded rat turns true blue; he bellylands his plane, heaps Philips over his shoulder and reels (about 25) back to their own lines. There Philips' repentant wife waves disconsolate farewell to Mitchum, but he does not even notice. He is staring at those vapor trails in the sky.
Producer-Director Dick Powell wisely spends a minimum amount of time munching on this knackwurst, trains his cameras as much as possible on the stirring capers of F-86s banging about the sky. He would have been even smarter to hire some tanker planes and never bring the jets down at all.