Impact

Another movie I recently watched to try to make some space on the DVR is Impact.

The movie starts off a bit less than promisingly, with some dopey narration defining the title of the movie for us: "Impact, the force with which two lives come together. Sometimes for good, sometimes for evil." We then meet Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy). He's a businessman in San Francisco who's been doing well for his company buying up factories. He's got a wife Irene (Helen Walker) with whom he's planning on going away for a bit. But we soon learn that things aren't quite as good as they seem. Irene is feigning illness, because she'd really rather be spending more time with the man with whom she's having an affair, Jim Torrence!

Anyhow, Walter drives off on one of his business trips that's supposed to end with him picking up Irene. But at the appointed spot, who meets him but Jim, who claims to be one of Irene's cousins that Walter has never met, and since Jim is heading the same way as Walter, perhaps he could drive Jim part of the way. This, as you can probably guess, is a ruse, especially when we see Jim releasing some of the air from one of the tires. Jim's plan, which Irene is in on, is to kill Walter when he stops the car to change the tire!

The two men get out to change the tire, and Jim hits Walter with a crowbar, pushing him down a hill, and then getting in the car and driving off. But Jim isn't careful enough, and crashes into an oil tanker, causing a fiery crash that kills him. Everybody naturally believes when the crash is found that Walter has died, because why would anybody suspect anything else?

Walter, however, hasn't died, but just got concussed. When he comes to, he hops on the back of a moving van, eventually ending up in the small town of Larkspur, ID. When he finds out about the car crash that everybody believes killed him, he feigns amnesia while trying to figure out what to do next. (Amazingly, nobody recognizes him despite his face having been in the newspaper.) He becomes a mechanic for service station owner Marsha (Ella Raines), and the two fall in love despite the fact that Walter can't follow through since he's still married.

Eventually, Marsha convinces Walter to deal with the secrets he's hiding, so he goes to San Francisco and reveals he's still alive. But Irene has a trick up her sleeve, suggesting that Walter had gotten in an argument with her, leading authorities to believe that perhaps Walter had planned to kill Irene and Jim. Amazingly, it's Walter who's going to have to stand trial.

Impact is a pretty good movie, despite the fact that I couldn't help but think there were a lot of plot holes. In addition to nobody recognizing Walter, parts of the trial seemed rather unrealistic. But suspend your disbelief and there's a farily entertaining movie. Donlevy in particular does well, as this is mostly his story. The two women are also good, Walker as the villainess and Raines as the good girl. The movie runs a bit longer than it probably should at 111 minutes; if the script could have been tighter we'd probably have an even better picture.

Impact is available on DVD should you want to watch.