Geez half of this movie belongs to Richard Conte.
Yeah he's technically the antagonist but he's the driving force throughout this whole thing.
Not to say anything about Cornel Wilde.
He does a fairly good job is your run-of-the-mill standard detective, but at the end of the day he really is just that.
A really standard detective. We don't even really get any back story on the guy. He's got a romantic interest with this dancer girl and her dying is one of the major reasons that he pushes to get Mr. Brown (that's Richards character) arrested in the end by any means necessary.
Which does demote the dancing girl to just a plot point. She was literally just there to progressed the plot of him. But then she was never that major a character to begin with so I guess it doesn't matter.
Anyways the story is really simplistic for a Noir themed film. It's a no-nonsense detective trying to take down this crime organisation by arresting it's leader.
But this leader (Mr. Brown) is way too connected and has most of his criminal Enterprise backed up with Alibis and financial loopholes.
You can't even charge the guy on booking because the entire operation is single-handedly put through mister Brown's head.
He doesn't write anything down and he doesn't keep any paper trail that could be used against him. The only thing he has is this girlfriend who really doesn't want to date him anymore because she has no control over her life she becomes one of the Prime Suspect that's used by the detective agency to try and bring Mr. Brown down.
She's also portrayed on the poster as a possible love interests for our protagonist. Which is quite a misleading thing as the two of them really don't have that much chemistry. They have a little flirting at one point but most of that's only set up to show jealousy from Mr. Brown. Otherwise she's just some random girl probably have helped bust the entire case down an hour into the movie but decides to hold back out of fear which ultimately Lancer even worse hot water.
Now despite the Simplicity of the story I'd still recommend watching it. It's pretty well-written and the acting is superb.
Richard Conte really holds this movie together and has such a wonderfully commanding presence. And the guy that plays the detective is fairly solid at his own performance too.
He's not overly interesting but he does keep your attention for the most part and it's fun to see him pair off against Richards character as the two of them try to play big wig to each other and get involved in Cross interrogation techniques.
Of which I have to say Richard wins out giving the brutal interrogation he ends up giving later on involving high bass drum music and his former boss's hearing aid. It's one of the more intense scenes of the movie and is a big reason why I'd recommend watching it.
Overall it has fairly decent pacing. I can't say that it's great given that it's only an hour and 20 minutes long and I was getting a little tired towards the end.
A lot of that might be down to just seeing so many noir films though. If you don't watch a hundred different detective movies than you probably won't have that problem at all.
It also feels just slightly dated.
Like a movie that should have come out in 1948.
Originally I misread the year for this film and thought that it came out in 1945 I thought it was doing pretty well for itself but then I noticed it was 55 and well; It's a little dated by that point. Not necessarily bad especially considering that most of the famous Noir movies actually came out in the 50s.
It's a good proper detective movie. If you're new to the noir films or you're just looking for something solid than this is a definite recommendation. A great stepping in point for an entire genre proven to be popular longer than just about anything else.
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