5 Against the House (1955)

Al (Guy Madison) and Brick (Brian Keith) have been friends at least ever since Brick saved Al’s life during the Korean War, getting wounded himself in the process. Both men are studying law now, going to college on the GI Bill, hanging around with two non-vets, the painfully annoying “funny” Roy (Alvy Moore), and self-styled rich kid brainiac Ronnie (Kerwin Mathews). Brick is suffering from a hefty helping of PTSD, swivelling between good humour bordering on mania, depression and violent outbursts – all things Al has made the habit of trying to counter as best as he can.

When the four men visit a casino in Reno, Nevada, together and witness a botched robbery, Ronnie decides he can do better and develops a plan how to rob the place and actually get away with it and the money, getting Roy and Brick in on the thing. Brick becomes rather obsessed with the whole plan, but it’s not as if Ronnie and Roy don’t want to go through with it. They do realize that square-jawed Al’s not simply going to help them, so they decide it’s best to surprise him into becoming an armed robber (seriously) by pretending to go on a simple trip to Reno with him and his fiancée Kay (Kim Novak) and hoping to talk him into it once they get there. When Al realizes what’s going on half-way to the place, where he was indeed planning to marry Kay, and shows himself to be less than pleased, Brick starts threatening Kay’s life.

So a robbery it is.

5 Against the House is never going to be one of my favourite films by the typically great Phil Karlson. There are a lot of elements in here that I find interesting and worthwhile, and the performances by Keith and Madison are fine, but the script has terrible pacing problems and has to go through awkward contortions to avoid problems with the still not unimportant Production Code where crime isn’t allowed to pay, if it wants to get to the ending where characters are allowed to live it clearly wants to have. Which alas leaves us with a film about a casino robbery where manoeuvring Al into a position where he can take part in the robbery without being morally culpable feels more important to the film than the heist itself. The musical number and some horrible, supposedly funny, business about our protagonists hazing a freshman do not improve the pacing, either; the latter also not my mood.

The film certainly often has its heart in the right place, allowing Brick to survive and potentially get better (not that the state of psychiatry in ‘55 gives one much hope for that), portraying his violence as well as his pain with as much honesty as it can get away with, and his mental illness as something he’s not responsible for and has little control over – which is pretty great for a film of its time, and also provides Brian Keith the opportunity for an equally great performance. Karlson does of course often excel in portraying the fragile parts of men living under the thumb of societally approved machismo, not exactly criticising the structures causing their pain and pushing them into causing pain to others but certainly not blind to these things.


Also pretty great is the robbery itself, once it finally gets going, the gang dressed up in cleverly ironic cowboy costumes (it makes sense, really) going through what turns out not to be the perfect robbery Ronnie envisioned. How we get there is what lets 5 Against the House down.