Black and white movie about war veterans

Movies
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Hello all, I saw less than half of a movie on TCM channel a few years back and I have no idea what the name is. I picked up the move towards the end and there was a distinct scene about one man looking for another man on a lake. It was a nature park of some sort where they were renting boats on a lake that was surrounded by mountains, and one man was chasing each other. The story was either one of them or both of them were war veterans that had returned home, and they somehow had some beef with one another. Final scene of the movie involved some kind of a train chase and ended with a train crash with a car (I think?) and one of them died.

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“The Chase” (1946)?

It is a black-and-white movie, it is on TCM, and quote from the below Wikipedia plot summary of the movie (it is how the movie ends):
“With Roman using his master accelerator to push the car’s speed to 100 mph, the car crashes into an oncoming train, killing both gangsters.”

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I believe that is the 1948 film noir, Act of Violence, which stared Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, and Janet Leigh. I have watched it on TCM several times – it is a terrific thriller and Robert Ryan is fantastic in it.

Van Heflin plays a WWII vet with a pretty wife (Janet Leigh), whose life is going along very well after the war. Then a man with a limp (Robert Ryan) comes to town looking for Van Heflin. We eventually learn that Van Heflin was Ryan’s commanding officer during the war. Van Heflin and his men were captured and held in a German POW camp. Some of the men planned an escape, but Van Heflin tipped off the Nazi guards (in exchange for food). All of the escaping prisoners were gunned down. Only Ryan survived, severely wounded in the leg. Van Heflin feels tremendous guilt for what he did, and finally confesses to his wife why Ryan has been hunting him since the end of the war, but he can’t bring himself to publicly admit his war crime and face the consequences. His wife pleads with Ryan and offers him money, but he will settle for nothing short of Van Heflin’s total destruction.

The film contains both of the scenes you describe. When Ryan first comes to town, he learns Van Heflin is on a fishing trip in the mountains, so Ryan goes there with a rifle, hoping to kill him. Ryan rents a rowboat and stalks Van Heflin on the lake, but never gets a clean shot. The climax of the film takes place at a train yard at night. There is a shooting, and a fiery car crash, and a major character dies.

I am pretty sure this is the movie you are looking for, but even if it isn’t, I highly recommend checking it out. I am a huge Robert Ryan fan, and this is definitely one of his finest films.

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