I am trying to picture myself as the script writer for Underworld U. S. A., and after watching the entire film, especially the final scene I cannot help but picture "it was a rainy night". The final scene (without providing any spoilers) which I suppose Cliff Robertson had no choice in following the directors instructions, and the screen writers plot, just ruined the film for me. Come on man, talk about over dramatizing. How many kids over the past one hundred (100) years of film making have not attempted to re-enact this final scene for their friends and family to a bustle of hysterical laughter?
I enjoy Cliff Robertson as an actor, and his supporting cast of Dolores Dorn, Beatrice Kay, and Richard Rust were no slouches either. I am disappointed though in the lack of the director/writer Samuel Fuller's ability to dig deep into the sheer will of his main actor Cliff Robertson, to bring out in his character Tolly Devlin, who witnessed as a fourteen (14) year old teenage boy the gang murder of his own father in a dark alley on New Years Eve. I can only imagine the sheer hate and vengeance this young boy would have carried for more than twenty (20) years and how he would have eventually chosen to get even with his father's four (4) murderers.
I give this film noir a respectable 6 out of 10 IMDB rating and I would have rated it even higher if only the writer/director Samuel Fuller, would have brought out in actor Cliff Robertson's character portrayal of a fourteen (14) year old teenage boy the more desperate search and destroy of the lives of the four (4) gangsters who murdered his father. Instead, Samuel Fuller concentrated too much of the films resolve on that final scene,.... "it was a rainy night".
I enjoy Cliff Robertson as an actor, and his supporting cast of Dolores Dorn, Beatrice Kay, and Richard Rust were no slouches either. I am disappointed though in the lack of the director/writer Samuel Fuller's ability to dig deep into the sheer will of his main actor Cliff Robertson, to bring out in his character Tolly Devlin, who witnessed as a fourteen (14) year old teenage boy the gang murder of his own father in a dark alley on New Years Eve. I can only imagine the sheer hate and vengeance this young boy would have carried for more than twenty (20) years and how he would have eventually chosen to get even with his father's four (4) murderers.
I give this film noir a respectable 6 out of 10 IMDB rating and I would have rated it even higher if only the writer/director Samuel Fuller, would have brought out in actor Cliff Robertson's character portrayal of a fourteen (14) year old teenage boy the more desperate search and destroy of the lives of the four (4) gangsters who murdered his father. Instead, Samuel Fuller concentrated too much of the films resolve on that final scene,.... "it was a rainy night".