Aboard a train slicing through the Southwestern night, the conductor summons a physician (Wesley Addy) to aid a passenger who has taken ill. `Polio' is his verdict, and he orders an unscheduled stop, so the patient can be taken by ambulance to a the nearest hospital. But first he must retrieve medical supplies from the locked baggage car. These supplies turn out to be a gun, three hypos to subdue the crew, and an explosive to relieve the safe of half a million dollars. When the train makes its stop, the doctor and his cronies vanish with the loot.
Back in Los Angeles, news of the robbery puts a crimp into insurance investigator Mark Stevens' plans for a holiday south of the border with his wife (Marianne Stewart). He feigns disappointment, but isn't all that surprised, since he masterminded the whole thing. Apparently deep in a dilly of a midlife crisis, he dreamed up this get-rich-quick scheme, on the proceeds of which he would leave his wife and abscond to Mexico with one of his partners in crime, Felicia Farr (who, off screen, would become Jack Lemmon's long-time spouse). But he hadn't counted on two factors: That fate would disrupt his meticulously plotted timetable, and that his partner in the investigation would be meticulous old pro King Calder....
Stevens' career as actor reached in high-water mark with The Dark Corner and The Street With No Name in the late 40s. In the 50s he turned his hand to producing and directing his own vehicles. The first, Cry Vengeance, was a pretty blatant knockoff of The Big Heat (and the camera was unkind to him), but Timetable, two years later, proves much better. Starting out as a clockwork heist movie, it quickly turns character-driven and wholly unsentimental. In his dual role as director and star, it's certainly Stevens' finest hour, anticipating, in its final Tijuana-set scenes, some of the corrupt, tourist-trap seediness of Touch of Evil.
Back in Los Angeles, news of the robbery puts a crimp into insurance investigator Mark Stevens' plans for a holiday south of the border with his wife (Marianne Stewart). He feigns disappointment, but isn't all that surprised, since he masterminded the whole thing. Apparently deep in a dilly of a midlife crisis, he dreamed up this get-rich-quick scheme, on the proceeds of which he would leave his wife and abscond to Mexico with one of his partners in crime, Felicia Farr (who, off screen, would become Jack Lemmon's long-time spouse). But he hadn't counted on two factors: That fate would disrupt his meticulously plotted timetable, and that his partner in the investigation would be meticulous old pro King Calder....
Stevens' career as actor reached in high-water mark with The Dark Corner and The Street With No Name in the late 40s. In the 50s he turned his hand to producing and directing his own vehicles. The first, Cry Vengeance, was a pretty blatant knockoff of The Big Heat (and the camera was unkind to him), but Timetable, two years later, proves much better. Starting out as a clockwork heist movie, it quickly turns character-driven and wholly unsentimental. In his dual role as director and star, it's certainly Stevens' finest hour, anticipating, in its final Tijuana-set scenes, some of the corrupt, tourist-trap seediness of Touch of Evil.