It’s a significant deal to some, I hope, that a Criterion Bluray of Carol Reed‘s Odd Man Out is streeting on 4.14. Not so much for me as I purchased the British Network Region 2 Bluray (which has some of the same extras as the Criterion) two and a half years ago, or in August of 2012.  Odd Man Out is regarded as a serious classic by boomer and GenX film mavens (or at least the more devoted of these), but I wonder if there are any under-35s who even know or care. I need to keep reminding myself that under-35s regard ’80s films as old, ’60s and ’70s films as wheelchair material and almost anything made before that as too musty by half.

An 8.20.12 riff called “Go Down Swinging”:

“Wild horses leaping to their deaths rather than be captured and tamed. Thelma and Louise deciding it’s better to tromp on the pedal than trim their sails. The aging Wild Bunch deciding to shoot it out with Mexican troops who outnumber them 20 to 1, figuring it’s better to exit guns blazing than wither on the vine. And Odd Man Out‘s Kathleen pulling a gun and firing at approaching police, knowing they’ll send she and Johnny McQueen to eternity.

“I don’t think Armageddon‘s Bruce Willis deciding to stay on the asteroid and sacrifice himself in order to save the world from destruction is the same kind of thing.

“Has the culture evolved to a place in which opting for defiant death is not seen as some kind of honorable romantic gesture? Is ‘it’s better to burn out than to fade away’ a petered-out philosophy ? And if not, what major characters, if any, have opted to stamp their own ticket at the end of a film or a miniseries rather than surrender?”

Kathleen Ryan, James Mason at the finale of Odd Man Out.