The Defiant Ones (1958) on Netflix
A truck carrying convicts crashes in the South. Two of them, shackled to each other, go on the run: Noah Cullen and John 'Joker' Jackson. They hate each other. A posse follows.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.5/1020,394 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
Noah Cullen and John 'Joker' Jackson are prisoners on a Southern chain gang, shackled to each other on a truck that swerves off the road in a rainstorm. They escape, one black and one white, and they hate each other, so the chain between them is the only thing that holds them together as they travel north toward a railroad where Cullen once worked, hoping a train still passes that way. Sheriff Max Muller leads a posse with bloodhounds, and he has to fight to keep his own mercy and sense of justice against a state police captain. Hard country and bad weather force the pair to depend on each other.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Defiant Ones (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sammy Davis Jr. revealed in his second autobiography Why Me that Elvis Presley wanted to star with him in The Defiant Ones, but Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was against it.
- Robert Mitchum, a veteran of a Southern chain gang, turned down the role of Johnny "Joker" Jackson because he believed a black man and a white man would not be chained together in the segregated South; his reason was later misreported as a refusal to work with a black man.
- Stanley Kramer cast Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando as the two leads, but a previous contractual obligation blocked Poitier; Kramer delayed production so long that Brando had to drop out, and Tony Curtis was cast afterwards.
- Tony Curtis asked that Sidney Poitier's name appear with his above the film's title, a first for Poitier in his career.
- Carl Switzer, of the Our Gang comedies, has a small role in The Defiant Ones; it was his last before his death.
