Suddenly

The title refers to a small town in California, upon which a trio of assassins descends, taking over a house with a fine parallax view of the railroad station, and making prisoners of the occupants, an upstanding suburban family (Gleason and Gates). The movie is lifted from the routine - it was made as a four-week quickie - by Sinatra's performance. When he was interested he could be terrific (Some Came Running, Pal Joey, The Detective). As John Baron, the nobody who became a somebody when WWII put a rifle in his hands and taught him to be a sniper, he's a strutting, sneering psycho. Even better he wears his hat indoors. He won a Silver Star for wiping out Germans. Now he's hauling down $500,000 to hit the President and nobody's gonna get in his way, including town sheriff Sterling Hayden.