Jim Stark (James Dean) moves to a new town where he has to start up as the “new kid” all over again. He comes to meet a girl named, Judy (Natalie Wood) and without a doubt, is smitten with her from the very beginning. Stark also comes into contact with a boy named, John ‘Plato’ Crawford; who is attached to Jim immediately. While at a school activity, Jim tries to impress Judy, but in the process makes her boyfriend, Buzz Genderman, mad and then causing his sad death because of a chickie-run (a form of a joust in during this time period).
Without a blink of an eye, Judy is at Jim’s side along with his “friend”, Plato. In the end there is a chase of Buzz’s friends trying to get even with Stark for the death of their friend. They first go to John, in his deranged mind, he grabs a gun and heads out to warn Jim. They all convene at an abandoned mansion, and the pace begins to pick up. The boys wanting revenge follow the three out to the house and chase them. Here, Plato shoots a bullet into one of the boy’s arm. Alarming the police and a chase witch leads to a heroic attempt on Stark’s shoulders, trying to calm the shatter-brained, John before anyone else got hurt. But because of the known gun, the police shoot John when we comes out of the building he was hiding in, though they did not know that Jim had removed the cartage. This is how the movie ends, in a sad scene of Stark crying over the dead body of the boy Plato, and Judy in shock, leaning over Jim, her also in tears.
The plot was unique during 1955, with a boy who is new, protecting a helpless fellow student he barely knows. With this boy having a sense of longing for the affection of parents, but because his parents are not in the picture, he tries to gather that from Judy and Jim. And a girl who seeks the adoration from her father, but not receiving any. They all intertwine in different ways, each having a specific role they play, but not deterring from it at all. Other than a few twist here and there, ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ was not very much different than the teenage movies produced now days. The character development was not much to speak up. The acting, efficient to get the movie viewers, but some of the acting was a bit on the sad side. Maybe because of the age gap between my generation and that, I did not find the acting believable enough to my tastes.
Jim Stark’s character was able to show true emotion, which was refreshing, but maybe a bit tad bit overdone. Judy played well, though her character was wishy-washy, floating to which guy she thought the coolest, almost as if she was taking off her old pair of shoes, throwing them away and buying a new one, because she knew they would be talk of the town (aka school). John/Plato is a sad character, which he was a tad hard to get a grasp for. Maybe this was what Nicholas Ray wanted when he created Plato’s role. Buzz played the typical bad guy who had thugs on his side, and does not mind hurting the weak.
‘Rebel Without a Cause’ had good actors, though I found them a little underplayed. Maybe it was the idea of the movie, or the stupidity I found in the end, or something that caused me to dislike the movie. Granted, the idea given by the movie of helping the week around you or the outcastes is a good moral to have. The presentation was a sad one, and could have been bettered.
