I remember being a little bit disappointed by this film when I first saw it, but then it was so hyped that was kind of inevitable. It's a top notch film noir with the benefit of a brilliant performance by Fred MacMurray in the lead role - MacMurray always excelled as creepy seemingly nice guys. Barbra Stanwyck's hair is a little funny (it's hard to buy her as irresistibly sexy with that blonde helmet) but she is good, too - though not as good as MacMurray and Edward G Robinson, the latter as an insurance investigator.
The minor support parts are OK - better written than acted. Everyone likes the plot and dialogue of this film, and they should because they are excellent. Two other things I really like in particular - the fact that MacMurray does the crime not really because of Stanwyck but because he's always wanted to have a go at a crime, and the fact that at the end he has a way of getting out of it - he's not dumb like William Hurt in Body Heat. An early Billy Wilder film so not as full of directorial flourishes as other film noir.
No comments:
Post a Comment