The Young Stranger

John Frankenheimer’s debut, The Young Stranger follows 16-year-old Hal Ditmar (James MacArthur) as he gets into trouble at a local movie theater and subsequently attempts to convince his father (James Daly’s Tom) that the altercation wasn’t his fault. Filmmaker Frankenheimer, working from Robert Dozier’s screenplay, delivers an erratically-paced yet rewarding drama that admittedly does tread exceedingly familiar territory, as the picture, which runs an appreciatively brisk 84 minutes, generally unfolds exactly as one might’ve anticipated based on the setup – with the better-than-average atmosphere due almost entirely to the strong performances and Frankenheimer’s solid handling of certain sequences. (There is, for example, a fairly electrifying interlude wherein Tom is confronted by the police officer that arrested his son.) It’s clear, however, that The Young Stranger‘s somewhat static midsection ultimately wreaks havoc on its already-tenuous momentum, and although scripter Dozier does a nice job of ensuring the story never becomes egregiously one-sided (ie it’s easy enough to sympathize with the point of view of the various adults), the movie builds towards a climax that isn’t quite able to pack the emotional punch that Frankenheimer has obviously intended – which finally cements the film’s place as a decent-enough first effort from a filmmaker who would go onto bigger and better things.

**1/2 out of ****