If you have the chance, get to your favorite video store (if it hasn't closed by now) or get onto your Netflix list and find "Ace in the Hole."

This 1951 gem is one of director Billy Wilder's lesser-known films, perhaps because it's one of his most cynical (and for the guy who made "Sunset Boulevard" and "The Apartment," that's saying something). It's also one of his best, and it resonates with timeliness every time the words "Breaking News" flash on CNN or MSNBC.

The movie stars Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, once a big-city newspaper reporter who's now working at a sleepy Albuquerque paper. He hears about an incident in a neighboring town, a man trapped in an abandoned mine tunnel. Chuck, desperate to resuscitate his journalism career, takes advantage of the situation -- puffing up the man's rescue into a national news event, complete with national media, gawking tourists and a carnival atmosphere (complete with a real-life circus tent).

I thought back to "Ace in the Hole" on Thursday, as the news networks went full-throttle on the story of Falcon Heene, the 6-year-old Fort Collins, Colo., boy who set off a major rescue operation when he let loose his parents' experimental balloon.

For cable news networks, this was an irresistible story: A kid in danger, an unusual rescue, and an uncertain ending. It also had gorgeous visuals, as the silver saucer-shaped balloon was gliding by news helicopters at 30 miles an hour, with the Rocky Mountains

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as a backdrop.

For the first hour or so, though, there was nothing else that could be said definitively other than the fact that there was a balloon in midair and it had to come down eventually. So the TV anchors had to fill in with speculation: How long could it stay afloat? How high might it go? Where will it land? And what condition will the little boy be in when the balloon comes to Earth?"

The new wrinkle is that the cable news channels no longer have the monopoly on the media circus that Wilder criticized in "Ace in the Hole."

No, now we have the Internet.

Punditry abounded online during the flight of the Heene family's balloon. Much of it early on was statements of concern for the boy's safety, though more than a few bad jokes found their way into the mix. "A superhero would be very helpful right about now. Any flying people out there?" a friend wrote on his Twitter feed. One Web site even had "Go, Falcon, Go!" T-shirts for sale before the balloon landed.

But the momentary mood also had room for condemnation of the news media. A columnist on the Web site Mediaite tapped out a quickie commentary headlined: "This Is Wrong: A Six Year-Old Child Could Die On Live Television One." Likewise, a friend of mine on Facebook commented: "If balloonboy is a hoax, it's sick. If it's real, its horrific. Either way, tune out!"

The mood shifted quickly to relief and bewilderment when the balloon landed and was found to be empty. Then the mood shifted to sadness when, for a few minutes, it was believed something had fallen from the balloon in mid-flight. Then, finally, when the authorities announced that Falcon was safe, having hidden in his attic and never flown away, the Internet's mercurial mood went back to relief and then derision.

And Twitter allowed America to pass judgment on this little kid, 140 characters at a time. On Thursday afternoon, Twitter was registering hundred of "tweets" per minute marked with the hashtag #balloonboy. Here are some examples:

» "Shouldn't we be calling him "Grounded Boy" now?"

» "Glad he's alive but what kind of Lifetime TV movie did we just go through?"

» "Hold on #BalloonBoy, Imma let you finish, but Amelia Earhart had one of the best flight disappearances of ALL time" (It's a Kanye West reference.)

The last predictable part of the pattern, one that "Ace in the Hole" also got right, is that the media circus always folds it tent and moves on to the next town. "Balloon Boy" was five days ago, and it won't be surprising when a new story takes its place in the public imagination.

Sean P. Means writes the Culture Vulture in daily blog form, at blogs.sltrib.com/vulture