Bad Day at Black Rock

“Just the way it happened!”

The train hasn't stopped at Black Rock in four years, and the town does not seem glad that it has now. John J. Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), a one-armed veteran in 1945, asks for a room and a ride and keeps running into Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) and his men, who answer every question with a stare. Sturges frames the whole thing in widescreen, so the empty desert around the town looks as tightly closed as a room.