SUDDENLY was, I suspect, meant to rebut Senator Joe McCarthy and prove, gosh darn it, Hollywood loves America, loves guns, hates pacifism, and pledges allegiance. You'll get that message in the first five minutes, and every few minutes all the way to the unsurprising end.<br /><br />There's a place for cornball movies with a message, but this movie is so cornball it's almost camp. The main message is that guns are necessary, and I don't argue or even disagree (I own two). But this message is hammered home over and over again, along with the goodness of cops and the greatness of America and the virtue of ordinary Americans. And again I'm not disagreeing, just bored silly -- the schmaltz drips off everything here, like pouring a whole bottle of syrup over a few pancakes.<br /><br />Frank Sinatra is excellent as the bad guy, though his scripted lines are frequently absurd. The dialogue is clumsy and clunky -- real people don't speak like this, and never did. Sterling Hayden has never seemed more wooden, and his obsession with the town's young widow is downright creepy and cries out for a restraining order.