The House On Carroll Street

Directed by Peter Yates, The House On Carroll Street follows Kelly McGillis’ Emily Crane as she stumbles on a post-WWII plot to smuggle Nazis into the United States – with the protagonist eventually enlisting the help of an earnest FBI agent (Jeff Daniels’ Cochran) to expose the conspiracy. It’s a compelling premise that is, at the outset, employed to less-than-enthralling effect by Yates, as the filmmaker, working from a screenplay by Walter Bernstein, delivers a slow-moving (and flat-out sluggish) endeavor that takes far too long to wholeheartedly get going – with, at least, the picture benefiting from its appealing period atmosphere and stirring performances. (McGillis and Daniels are quite good here, to be sure, and yet it’s Mandy Patinkin, cast as a smug lawyer, that easily walks away with the title of M.V.P.) There’s little doubt, then, that The House On Carroll Street improves considerably once it progresses into a midsection littered with engaging digressions and sequences, including a terrific encounter between McGillis and Patinkin’s respective characters and an unexpectedly thrilling scene involving Cochran’s efforts at diffusing a bomb, while the exciting climax ensures that the whole thing concludes on a positive note – with the end result an erratic but rewarding piece of work that fares better than one might’ve initially anticipated.

*** out of ****