Reviews

First, the film is set in Chicago, not New York. Fine acting from Quinn, the great Irene Pappas as his wife, and the enigmatic and quite lovely Inger Stevens in, sadly, her last film. Sam Levene is touching as Quinn's dear friend. Quinn as life force and failed dreamer is not to everyone's taste ... but it's Anthony Quinn--always the romantic, raging mensch with a code in those mean streets--a code that he eventually betrays, though with a compelling motive. This is curious film in many ways but a classic example of what happens when men and their dreams collude with what Pappas' character calls "dirty reality."

There are some actors (Barbara Stanwyck, Trevor Howard) who I would watch in anything. Alan Arkin is almost one of them. This is an incoherent mess of a film, with an incomprehensible plot, brutal cops presented positively, acres of stupid car and and cycle chases. Its one saving grace is the relationship between the Arkin and Caan cop characters and some of their dialogue. If you are an Arkin or Caan completist, watch if you can, otherwise ... I cannot think of a bigger waste of time. Caan is as good as the material lets him be, Arkin's sense of timing and Zen presence are a joy, and one of two scenes i which the dialogue seems from a different, better film are not, alas, enough.

I did not dislike this film, I hated it. I never thought I would write anything like this about a film starring Robert Mitchum and directed by Minelli. Mitchum sleep walks through this trash and Minnelli seem to have lost his touch. The toxic masculinity that expresses itself in NRA style gun worship, the measuring of manhood by how many animals you can kill for "sport," crude conversation and "jokes," and whoring tells you everything that is poisonous about American gender politics. Hamilton, a ten-cent James Dean in this film, is at least trying to act. The others are cartoons. Recommended for fans of ghastly 1950s interior decorating and vulgarity and toxic men. The others should watch something, anything, worth watching.

It is said that Reagan did not like playing a bad guy. This astonishes me because the part of Jack is suited to his limited acting skills and even more to his mean face--those mismatched eyes and the tight ugly mouth seem made for a B-list bad guy. That aside, Marvin and Gulager are superbly icy, the action sequences are exciting and tightly shot, Angie Dickinson is her own special self, and the great Cassavetes uses his talent for twitchy menace alternating with vulnerability to great effect. The remake is as good, in its own way, as the original was in its.

Wonderfully entertaining film with Hepburn and Tracy on top form.

The "beau" who disconcerts the Hepburn character is Collier Weld (played by William Ching) not the boxer played by Aldo Ray.

Sapper was a rotten writer--sub-James Bond with fascist overtones. This is, despite having Ralph Richardson and other good actors, a rotten film about a gang of upper class Mosleyite thugs opposing villainous "cosmopolitan" (wink, nudge) elements.

I can watch anything with Ralph Richardson in but this tested my limits.

This is not the worst film I have seen, but it is among the most incoherent. My two stars are for splendid over-the-top cameos by the great William Demarest and the great Agnes Moorehead and a valiant try by Jacques Aubuchon. What are we supposed to make of an allegedly crack investigator who relies entirely on research by others and wildly improbable coincidences? What are we to make of the Jeanne Crain character whose only role is to look lovely, introduce the "hero" to another woman, reunite passionately with said "hero," and then vanish without trace? What above all are we to make of our hero's deep love for the Dina Merrill character when he fails to recognize her when sitting next to her and talking to her on a long plane flight? The story is ludicrous, the lovely Dina Merrill is seriously miscast, most of the male actors are stiffs, the denouement is absurd, and none of this farrago makes any sense at all.

This is essential viewing for anyone seriously interested in Hollywood films. The simple story, of an unknown beauty being discovered by a male star and her career taking off as his goes into alcoholic decline, is rendered with great delicacy--helped by the lambent beauty of Constance Bennett and the subtle acting of the principals. It is almost painful to see the tragic real life of the fine actor Lowell Sherman turned into screen magic, at first with humour and a light touch and ultimately poignantly. His Barrymore-esque character never veers into caricature. Gregory Ratoff, as the archetypical mogul, complete with yes-men, is a delight and Neil Hamilton, as Bennett's love interest is adequately square jawed. It's a Cukor film and looks it. Highly recommended.

This is a dreadful film. Rock Hudson speaks as if he were dubbed. Cardinale is unbearably kittenish and cutesy-poo as she deploys her three facial expressions and the "plot' is incomprehensible. Not one person acts as if she or he were a normal human being. It is hard not to lose the will to live after about half an hour of this tosh. The scenes of them behaving like idiots in Rome are straight out of the viagra school of advertising and one expects a voice over announcing that you should see a doctor if your boredom lasts for more than four hours. A forgettable score by Enrico Morrioni, an unbelievable script that seems to have been run through an automatic translation machine, two stars at the bottom of their game, direction, such as it is, that uses every cliché from caper films in seemingly random order--what's not to hate?