Discovering that a disenfranchised local youth is planning a revenge murder, an altruistic social worker desperately tries to prevent the crime without police intervention in this juvenile delinquency drama directed by Don Siegel. The film is not particularly subtle with its agenda as lead actor James Whitmore bluntly states such truisms as "you can't tell a kid to be good" and as all parents find themselves exasperated by their kids in the most melodramatic manner possible. Will Kuluva is especially over-the-top as Sal Mineo's father who tries to get through to the boy by telling him that he wants to kiss him (!) while on the side telling Whitmore that he "has to hit" Mineo since it is all that the boy understands. The film features a phenomenal early turn by John Cassavetes though as the youth planning the murder with lots of subtle nuances whenever he listens to Whitmore lecture and as he plays on the fears of his friends. The real star of the show though is Siegel's directing work. Fresh from 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', Siegel shoots the film with a myriad of intense close-ups as his young cast emote. The film also opens with a deathly intense pre-credits scene as good as anything Siegel ever directed. This is an odd movie: one hand, it is distractingly didactic; on the other hand, it looks so great and Cassavetes is so solid that is nevertheless involving.
Review of Crime in the Streets
