Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

davidcarniglia Incredibly thrilling noir film. Well-cast and acted, atmospheric, with a classic noir plot. From the very first scene in Robert Ryan's dingy apartment as he retrieves his pistol, to the final scene in the railyard that finds Van Heflin mistakenly killed by the hood he never wanted to hire, neither of the protagonists can escape the web of the past.The fact that Ryan and Heflin's feud goes back to a dilemma from the war ensures that there's nothing they can do to change their collision course. From the bright new suburbs and mountain lake, the characters stumble through the dank, windy sleaze of in the dingy corners of nightime L.A.Both characters are tragically flawed, yet both are sympathetic. We can see why Ryan seeks revenge for Heflin's wartime collaboration, while Heflin felt forced to make the best deal he could with their duplicitous Nazi captors. Just when Heflin leaves himself open to the vengeful Ryan, another mistake aborts their reconciliation.We are left with Ryan assuming or at least acknowledging responsibility for his part in the feud, by telling the assembled crowd at Heflin's heroic death that he will tell his wife. We can imagine that, even in her rage against Ryan for accelerating the feud, she at least will know that her husband was shot trying to warn his enemy about the hired killer, and died trying to 'square' things by confronting the killer.His past misdeed that allowed his fellow prisoners to die, is in a sense redeemed by killing the Nazi-like gangster. Johnny is an especially slimy hood; when he smells money by offering to kill Ryan, and Heflin hesitates to commit himself, Johnny remarks that it's best to "get rid of this guy, and be sorry later."Both Ryan and Heflin appear sickened by their ordeal, enduring a nightmarish slugfest with an underworld of bars, cheap hotel rooms, alleys, tunnels, and the iconic trainyard that seems to bind them to a world without nature or emotion.One of the best, if not the best film noir.

chaos-rampant How much you'll enjoy this will probably come down to your affinity for a cat-and-mouse game. Others have written about how taut it is, they're right.But how best to describe its transcendent quality as noir? This I find more interesting. It can't be just a psychology, an explication of themes and morals, which is a passive way to deal with anything, separating it from life. Sure, the film is about guilt and justice, but that makes us no wiser to the immediacy. So I'd like here to carefully extricate the opening passage from the film, because it is so 'pure', and directly point at it, which is the true moment of noir where illusion comes into being.Two men have come back from the war, one of them bitter and mad, his mental state reflected in his eerie limping. As he gets off the bus at LA, he walks right into a military parade, signifying the war he emerges from, the polished image of that war, but we see in his limp the bitter reality. The other is the pillar of his community, a builder of things, a good husband. The first will be looking for him around sunny California, stops by his house one morning to query the beautiful wife. So a bewildered man emerges into the world, as simple as this. A man, who by his very emergence, creates the other's hallucinated nightmare, suggests something shadowy. This is always the first movement of noir, the coming back to, the emergence. In Detour, a dishevelled man washes up in a desert bar. In Double Indemnity, he staggers to a phone. In Deadline at Dawn, he wakes up with money in his pockets and no memory of his time spent with the wrong woman.It's all so mesmerizing in the opening movements, done with such clarity, you must have this in your cinematic life. The circling of boats in the lake. The drawing of the curtains in the house, to shield the wife from knowing. The eerie footsteps going around the house. Each one a case of drawing the mystery man closer to perception and unconcealment.Simple but so evocative. It's a thrilling piece, just these couple of scenes. And then we have the moral conundrums, potent but ordinary because all the stuff we grasped from just a handful of images, of simple motions, has to be talked about to signify the complexity. It misspends this great momentum. I'd have liked a more nightmarish journey of atonement, from roughly when our protagonist meets Mary Astor in a bar.Noir Meter: 4/4

jotix100 Frank Enley is being honored as a war hero in his small town of Santa Lisa. This WWII veteran has made a life for himself, his wife Edith and son Georgie. They appear to be living the "American dream" as it was known in the late 1940s. Joe Parkson, a man from Frank's past enters the picture with an agenda. He has come to kill his former colleague, whom he blames for his own injured leg and the death of a few of their fellow soldiers after a failed attempt to flee a German prison camp.Frank has everything to lose. His reputation in the community, his new life, his family, and the business he has built by himself. It is no wonder he has no desire to meet Parkson, who blames him for ratting on the group. Frank, who acted selfishly, under strenuous circumstances, thinking he could prevent the death of his fellow soldiers, must face his past head on. His guilt about the tragedy he caused haunts him everywhere he goes. His only choice is to stay away from Joe is to leave Santa Lisa in favor of the anonymity of Los Angeles, where he goes to a construction convention.Joe Parkson, determined to hunt him down, follows Enley to the hotel where the festivities are being held. Frank is able to get away. Knowing he is a hunted man, he goes into a dive, where he meets Pat, a woman who might be a hooker, with connections to the criminal element. She realizes there is an opportunity to sell Frank Enley to a man that will get rid of his tormentor for a price.This seldom seen MGM film from director Fred Zinnemann of 1948 was shown recently on a classic film channel. Based on a Collier Young story and a screenplay by Robert Richards, the film does not disappoint. Thanks to the excellent Robert Surtees cinematography, the director opened the action to the Los Angeles of that era. Mr. Zinnemman's camera angles are impeccable, plus the locales chosen to stage the action add texture to the drama. Mr. Zinnemann seemed to be a natural for this kind of genre, as he later demonstrated with his masterpiece "From Here to Eternity", about the effects of the war to the people that fought it, and in this case, the prisoners of war that had to deal with the violence of their captors and the actions they undertook to liberate themselves at whatever price. The guilt of Einley follows him no matter where he tries to hide.The two principals, Robert Ryan and Van Heflin was a coup of casting. Both actors were at the peak of their career. Both give solid performances as the former friends now turned enemies. A young Janet Leigh plays Edith, the wife without a clue as to her husband's past. Mary Astor did a superb job out of her Pat, a woman that would sell a man for cash. Phyllis Thaxter appears as Ann, the woman in love with Joe.

bkoganbing Neither Van Heflin or Robert Ryan were ever considered matinée idols or big box office draws. But both men were consummate professionals who could cast well in a variety of roles. I think that Act Of Violence could have worked just as well if they had played each other's parts.MGM was a studio that did not do noir films very often, but in this case with Fred Zinnemann directing they did this one very well. No cops or private eyes in this one, both men are your average American of 1948. One has done a terrible wrong to the other and the other is seeking revenge.Heflin is a former pilot who was shot down over Germany during World War II and Ryan was his bombardier. They both did time in a POW camp where Heflin informed on escape plans that Ryan and others made. No one survived but Ryan and he now walks with a limp, courtesy of Nazi machine gunners. In civilian life Heflin is now a very successful contractor and when he hears Ryan is looking for him, he gets naturally rattled which concerns his wife Janet Leigh. Heflin who was not going to go to a convention in Los Angeles now changes his mind abruptly, but not before explaining to Leigh the reason for his fear. It's more fear of being exposed than for his life.In Los Angeles Heflin who won his Oscar for Johnny Eager playing an alcoholic borrows a bit from that role as he ends up in a waterfront dive pouring his troubles out to some lowlifes played by Mary Astor, Taylor Holmes, and Berry Kroeger. Holmes is also drawing a bit from a previous role as a shyster lawyer in Kiss Of Death as he's playing the same kind of character in seedier circumstances. In fact Holmes's character says he is an attorney. I know Fred Zinnemann must have seen Kiss Of Death and cast Holmes as a result of that.The climax might not be what you think, but in a way it's a fitting ending to the story. Though they get good support from the rest of the cast Heflin and Ryan dominate the story though they have no scenes together until the end. Act Of Violence is a noir classic and fans of Heflin and Ryan should list it among their best performances.