The Young Savages

Directed by John Frankenheimer, The Young Savages follows New York City assistant district attorney Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster) as he’s tasked with prosecuting three young gang members for the murder of a blind rival. Filmmaker Frankenheimer, working from Edward Anhalt and J.P. Miller’s screenplay, delivers a slow and mostly uninvolving drama that boasts few wholeheartedly compelling attributes, with the arms-length atmosphere heightened and perpetuated by a repetitive midsection focused almost entirely on Hank’s investigation into the aforementioned killing. It is, as such, certainly not surprising to note that large swaths of The Young Savages come off as a hopelessly run-of-the-mill police procedural, as the picture contains a disproportionate (and ultimately suffocating) number of scenes wherein Hank tracks down and speaks to a variety of individuals – with such interludes hardly as interesting or engrossing as Frankenheimer has obviously intended. (The proliferation of unlikable, unpleasant characters within the expansive supporting cast does little to alleviate this feeling, undoubtedly.) And although the movie’s been sprinkled with a small handful of engaging sequences, including a tense moment that finds Hank’s wife attacked by gang members, The Young Savages, which builds towards a padded-out courtroom finale emblematic of its far-from-focused sensibilities, predominantly comes off as a tedious drama that squanders a predictably solid Lancaster performance to a progressively distressing degree.

*1/2 out of ****