High Pressure

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, High Pressure follows a slick conman (William Powell’s Gar Evans as he agrees to help promote an artificial rubber product that may or may not even exist. Filmmaker LeRoy, armed with a script by Joseph Jackson, delivers a briskly-paced yet woefully uninvolving endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes virtually from the word go, as the picture, which runs a short-yet-not-short-enough 74 minutes, kicks off with a thoroughly tedious opening stretch that contains little in the way of attention-grabbing, compelling attributes – with the relentless, exhausting emphasis on meaningless chatter doing little to allay the arms-length atmosphere. And while Powell offers up as charming and ingratiating a performance as one might’ve anticipated, High Pressure progresses into an increasingly frenetic midsection and second half that remains hopelessly (and aggressively) unable to even fleetingly capture the viewer’s interest – which does, in the end, confirm the movie’s place as a misfire that squanders a typically solid turn by Powell.

*1/2 out of ****