Anthony Mann’s thriller The Tall Target is similar in spirit and style to his contemporary film noir works of the late 1940s, including T-Men and Raw Deal. A crackerjack suspense film produced by MGM, The Tall Target also happens to be an uncommonly effective piece of historical fiction and a uniquely vivid period piece. It’s about an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln, though it’s set not in 1865 but in 1861. The movie ingeniously covers a subject that is part of our history, but through an episode in which that history is temporarily averted. Lincoln isn’t going to die this time, though the story’s villain will utter this warning: “Mr. Lincoln’s a tall target; there’ll be another day.” The foregone conclusion that Lincoln will be alive at the end of the picture doesn’t prevent it from being a wildly pleasurable ride as one man risks his life to save the nation’s new leader. That character’s name just happens to be John Kennedy, providing the drama with an intriguing accidental resonance. Watching a film about presidential assassination, released in 1951, in which the main character is named John Kennedy is not an experience you’re likely to forget. Set primarily aboard a speeding train, The Tall Target is part of cinema’s long-running love affair with locomotive stories, starting with The Great Train Robbery (1903), and continuing with The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Narrow Margin (1952), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974), to name but a few. The Tall Target is in a class with the best of them.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
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