Suddenly

Suddenly is one of those movies where the lead performance is so dazzling that any scene without them feels like a slog. Frank Sinatra is ridiculously fun to watch even though the story is simple, the other actors have weird and flat affects, and this badly colorized black and white movie has a strange rainbow shimmer and Ol’ Blue Eyes has brown eyes for some reason. Even though he’s teeny tiny and facing off with big burly dudes, he’s convincingly intimidating. He’s so good he almost manages to make this a good movie. The problem is the movie’s core message is that guns are totally awesome and everyone, even sassy little boys, should have one.

It starts with a guy in a car pulling up to a cop and asking for directions. He asks the cop what this town’s name is, and the cop says that the town is called Suddenly because it used to be full of criminals shooting each other in the streets but now things are so dull they’re thinking of changing the name to Gradually. This sets the pulpy tone but also previews how overwritten and badly acted it is. The cop is weirdly chatty and informative like Alice Cooper in Wayne’s World educating his groupies about the history of Milwaukee.

The next scene outlines the movie’s Guns Are Awesome thesis. Sheriff Tod is window shopping with a boy named Pidge, who is the son of Tod’s widowed girlfriend Ellen. Pidge really wants a cap gun, but his mom is against it because his dad died in WWII. Tod doesn’t care and buys Pidge the cap gun anyway. Later, Tod uses all his monotone charm to hit on Ellen, but Ellen’s pissed because of the cap gun. Tod argues, “The boy’s gotta learn some time that guns aren’t necessarily bad. Depends on who uses them.” Tod believes in the NRA’s slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” Sure, people kill people–with guns.

Now that we’ve established that guns are great and women are dumb and should be ignored, the plot gets going. A couple of guys working in a telegram office complain about how boring it always is when a telegram comes through and the guy reading it exclaims, “Goodnight shirt!” They tell Sheriff Tod that the president is stopping in town at 5 o’clock that evening. Tod meets with secret service agents, who instruct him to check out a house on a hill that has a clear view of the train station. The house belongs to Pop Benson, a retired secret service agent and Ellen’s father-in-law.

At the house, Pidge is being a little shit to his mother because she won’t let him play with his new cap gun. She even made him a cake! But he ignores the cake and her, telling her that the other boys call him a sissy for not having his own gun. Pop sticks up for Pidge, telling Ellen about a kid that was raised in a germ-free environment and, after going out into the world for the first time, died of pneumonia. Because guns, like germs, are a ubiquitous and naturally occurring part of the environment. He thinks that Pidge should be a soldier just like his dad was, but Ellen points out that her husband died horribly on a battlefield thousands of miles away from home. Pop says that his son would be ashamed of her, which really upsets Ellen.

Satisfied with making a widow cry, Pop tries to fix the TV. Ellen tells Pop to be careful since the TV has a high voltage panel, and Pop yells at her, “Ellen, will you please stop being a woman!” Then he plugs the TV in and gets shocked.

Sinatra and a couple guys show up at their door, posing as FBI agents. He and Pop bond over being government agents, and Pop tells him he was Calvin Coolidge’s bodyguard until he was shot in the heart “on one of Cal’s hunting trips,” some sort of Dick Cheney scenario. Pidge joins the conversation and Sinatra calls him a squirt, but Pidge isn’t having it: “I ain’t a squirt.”

Then Sheriff Tod and a secret service agent show up at the house but the agent is surprised that there are FBI agents at the house, and Sinatra and his goons shoot him dead and shoot Tod in the arm. They take everyone hostage and threaten to kill Pidge if anyone steps out of line.

The hostages and goons settle into a dynamic where Sinatra is the guy in charge and loves to talk about himself, Tod nurses his injured arm and psychoanalyzes Sinatra, Pop schemes, Ellen cries a lot, and Pidge yells insults at the gangsters.

Pidge has an extremely high voice, is cutely impetuous, and has only one mode: shouty. He’s constantly sassing Sinatra and the goons. “You’re a dirty, lousy gangster!” “They’re stinking traitors. They’re Benedict Arnolds.” “You stink!” I love Pidge, the screamy little squirt.

Sinatra’s plan is to shoot the president through the window with a rifle that’s bolted to a table that’s bolted to the floor. Sinatra yammers about the rifle and how he “did a lot of chopping in the war with a baby like this. A lot of chopping.” He tries to impress Pidge by telling him that he got a Silver Star in the war, but Pidge sasses back that he stole it. Sinatra slaps Pidge to the ground. Sinatra sends one of his goons into town, but the goon is found out and killed by a cop.

Tod keeps Sinatra talking about himself. Sinatra once again brags that he got a Silver Star in the war and “killed 27 Jerries (Germans) all by myself.” Tod says he’s a born killer and that he knew a couple guys like that. Sinatra points out, “Funny thing. In the war you do a lot of chopping and you get a metal for it. Come back and do the same thing and they fry you for it.” He gloats to Tod, who was a corporal, that he made sergeant. Tod asks why he went home, and when Sinatra doesn’t have a convincing reason, he accuses him of being a Section 8, deemed mentally unfit. He’s probably right because Sinatra is rattled, circling him, pointing his gun at him, telling him to “turn it off,” and kicking him in his injured arm.

Sinatra’s goon gets cold feet and tries persuading Sinatra to leave, but Sinatra calls him chicken and says not to embarrass him in front of Sheriff Tod. Anyway, they’ve already murdered someone and you can only get the gas once. Then he says he was a nobody until he picked up a gun and started killing people and having a gun gives you the power of life and death like a god.

All this time the adults have been scheming. They manage to attach the high voltage panel of the TV to the table that the rifle’s bolted to and spill a glass of water in front of it. Pidge quietly swaps out his harmless cap gun for his Pop’s real gun. Finally, it’s 5 o’clock and the goon gets to the gun before Sinatra can and is zapped with electricity, shooting the gun erratically, alerting the cops, who shoot back and kill him. Determined to finish the job, Sinatra unplugs the TV and gets to the gun but the president’s train doesn’t stop after all.

While he’s distracted, Pidge grabs Pop’s gun, shoots at Sinatra and misses, Ellen picks it up and hits him, then Tod takes it from her and shoots him dead. All these people passing around one gun hilariously plays out like the classic SNL skit Dear Sister.

In the aftermath, Ellen is now all in on Tod and they kiss. Pidge and Pop are hanging out and Pidge says he’s going to grow up to be a bodyguard just like Pop, but Pop says no, he’s going to grow up to be the president and presidents have bodyguards. Pidge asks if they also have grandpops and Pop says they also have grandpops. It’s cute.

In the end, a guy drives up to Tod and asks for directions then asks what this town is called. After Tod tells him it’s Suddenly, the guy says that’s a funny name for a town, and Tod says he doesn’t know about that.

Sinatra is incredible in this: charismatic, sinister, funny, tough, sensitive, and psychotic. He really elevates the whole thing, making every interaction he has with these other flat characters way better. Pidge is also great because he’s such an over the top, flashy, and just awful child actor, but I found his atomic levels of sass really funny.

Unfortunately, the whole movie is extremely pro gun, and I hate guns. The casual sexism and ridiculous rah rah patriotism are very much of the time, so I’m grading those aspects on a curve, but guns have always been a terrible scourge in this country. Still, Sinatra is an incredible villain.

VERDICT: NOT GUILTY