Ace in the Hole

It’s only a matter of time before Ace in the Hole gets resurrected and put in the Film Canon of film canons.  It’s already in ours.  This cynical movie covers ground already staked out by some culturally conservative political and religious groups.  It would not work for any group intertwined with the powers-that-be, since it is a firm indictment of any reigning media establishment. But it is so biting, and so true, that we highly recommend it for anyone with a countercultural mindset.  That includes those of you who have gladly taken an axe to your TV set and are slightly cynical about present-day politics.

The irony is that Ace in the Hole — like so many classic movies from the first half of the twentieth century — was originally a liberal critique.  Back then, in the 1950s, liberals were only mild hypocrites with a good sense of Christian morality.  So while Ace in the Hole is a critique of capitalism, it actually critiques it on the basis of Christian morality, and not for multicultural tolerance or just because.

Ace in the Hole is the story of Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter on the lookout for number one.  Tatum seeks instant fame for himself, and, having been kicked out of the major cities on the east coast for his drive and determination to get The Story, he winds up in New Mexico.  Tatum takes a job at an Albuquerque newspaper, whose editor has an embroidered sign outside his door that says “Tell the Truth.”  Tatum sneers at this, complains about being in the desert, where nothing happens, and heads off to do another story.

On the way to that story, Tatum finds another one.  He learns that a man is stuck in a remote cave, an old Indian burial ground.  Smelling a major human-interest piece, Tatum crawls inside the cave to talk to the man.  Here there is little wrong, the man is only trapped in a cave-in, but the rescue job should take just a few hours.  But Tatum sees something in this situation he cannot resist: opportunity.

Here is where things get interesting.  Tatum stalls the rescue job.  After sending a piece to his newspaper about a man trapped in the mystical Mountain of the Seven Vultures, Tatum convinces the local sheriff to drill from the top instead of the bottom.  This will take days, as opposed to hours, but the benefit is that Tatum will make this a national story and turn the sheriff into the hero.  Not coincidentally, the sheriff is up for a tough re-election very soon.

The conspiracy further escalates.  The trapped man’s wife runs a diner nearby.  Like Tatum, she hates the remoteness of New Mexico.  When Tatum’s story breaks nationally, and tourists arrive in droves, her business increases exponentially.  She begins to be attracted to Tatum.  He’s an icon, a rockstar, the lone reporter who has access to the cave and the man who provides the scoop to the entire country.  She wants to run away with him to New York, and forgets about her trapped husband.

And then there are the tourists.  These naive people begin arriving at the cave-in after Tatum’s story breaks.  Soon, the cave is surrounded by commerce.  Ferris wheels, food vendors, impromptu concerts, and hundreds of people.  This cave-in, thanks to Tatum, is big business.

Everyone seems concerned about the trapped man, or is that the real concern?  The tourists, like good sheep, do not realize they are simple, manipulated consumers.   They think the trapped man will be rescued in a few days.  The other newspaper reporters feed their respective papers with information.  But the entire situation is a money machine, engineered by Tatum, who resigns from his New Mexican newspaper and earns a thousand a day working as an independent journalist.

So this movie is cynical about the following: consumerism, celebrity culture, media power, political electioneering, the purpose of human interest stories, and the neutrality of journalism.  But it is cynical in a morally critical way.  Watch how Christian iconography is used at the end, as the trapped man nears the end of the drilling and the end of his life.  Will he die?  This question is not as important as, what does that really mean for Tatum?

This is a movie that regular readers of this blog will definitely want to see.

Entertainment: 8

Intelligence: 8

Morality: 9