Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Madilyn Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Robert J. Maxwell Pat O'Brien is an art expert who gives lectures at a tony art museum in a big city. While riding on a speeding train, he sees another iron horse approaching. As O'Bien stares in mounting horror, it gets close. Too close. And then -- Ka-BOOM -- lights flash on and off, everything tumbles upside down, and when O'Brien comes to he finds he's punching his way drunkenly through the door of the museum, interrupting an important staff meeting, and the police are brought in to handle him. They coach the kinetic O'Brien onto a couch and everyone listens to his story, which is exciting, thrilling even, except for the fact that there has been no train crash anywhere.The plot takes us deep into the seamy underworld of fine art. Well, we all knew it was a garbage pit to begin with, full of hoity-toity zealots who fling around the names of high-falutin' Frogs like Picasso, Gainsborough, Hopper, Rivera, el Greco, Carravagio, Da Vinci, Turner, Goya, Dürer, Hokusai, and Wang Wei. But, okay, this doesn't make for much of a feature-length picture, so we are soon in noir territory, if you can imagine good-natured Pat O'Brien as the central figure in a movie filled with dark shadows, fog, louche dives, penthouse apartments, tuxedos, intrigues, helpful but suspicious friends, truth serum, murder, and insurance fraud.The reason for O'Brien's imagined crack-up is banal and I won't give it away, though the discerning viewer may guess it before long. It's not a bad film. It's routine, but you'll probably stick around for the end when, as movie detectives are fond of saying, all will be explained.

MartinHafer This film was made relatively late in Pat O'Brien's career and the film is a nice little departure from the standard Warner Brothers roles that he was known for--you know, the "niceguy" characters like priests and football coaches. Instead, this film starts with O'Brien running amok and attacking a police officer--now that's a departure!! From this intense initial scene, it seems that everyone at the museum where he works now thinks that he is crazy and dangerous. However, the film's heart is that Pat has been set up to be discredited. Exactly why isn't super hard to guess once the film gets going, however the details and everything fits so nicely together to make this such an excellent film. You see, Pat behaves rather foolishly at times--blundering into things and acting like he must unravel the mystery alone. However, fortunately, this sort of 'lone wolf' mentality is NOT rewarded in the film. Instead, some logical and intelligent writing is involved that make the story seem believable and interesting. So, instead of the film being one cliché after another, when the clichés look like they are coming, the film takes some unexpected twists that keep the viewer guessing. Now I could tell you more about the film and ruin it for you, so I'll quit yammering. Instead, I'll just conclude by strongly recommending you see this wonderful film yourself.

Chris Gaskin Crack-Up came on BBC2 one afternoon and as I was out, I recorded this and was pleased I did.An art curator gets a phone call claiming his mother is unwell, so he gets the first train to New York and it turns out this call was a lie and he gets the idea the train has crashed, which it hasn't. He then takes part in a forgery involving fake paintings. Two women are also involved in this but the police catch up with them at the end.Crack-Up is rather atmospheric in parts, especially the New York dockside sequence. It is also light-hearted at times.The cast includes a good performance from Pat O'Brien and is joined by Clare Trevor (Key Largo), Herbert Marshall (The Secret Garden), Wallace Ford and Ray Collins.This is worth viewing at least once. Enjoyable.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

oscarbreath A noir that came from the B unit, a good story passably told. Pat O'Brien plays his part very calmly and with great restraint - or is it that he's not much of an actor? Hard to tell. The women are also hard to figure, either by directorial choice or because they're not up to snuff either.It really starts to drag towards the end, there's a bit with truth serum that adds nothing to the story except padding. There are also a couple of unintentionally funny bits where the luggish O'Brien suddenly springs to action and (his double) does stunts that are totally out of character.A mildly entertaining 90 minutes of noir-ish style, has some very nice lighting effects and the train crash is well executed.