Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Michael_Elliott Flamingo Road (1949)*** (out of 4)Soap opera with some trash thrown in is the best way to describe this Warner thriller. Lane Bellamy (Joan Crawford) decides its time to leave the circus so when they leave town she decides to stay. At first this seems like a good idea when she meets deputy sheriff Dan Reynolds (David Brian) but soon the sheriff (Sydney Greenstreet) decides to play dirty and have her thrown into jail. Once out she plans her revenge. FLAMINGO ROAD is part politics, part thriller, part soap opera and there's even some trash moments thrown in and as usual director Michael Curtiz manages to hold everything together and deliver a very entertaining film. The movie certainly isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but there are enough very good moments to make it worth viewing and especially if you're a fan of the cast. Crawford, supporting a blonde hair color, manages to be very good here, although this certainly won't rank among her best performances. Some of the best scenes has her going on off the crooked sheriff as she makes it clear that she's not going to be pushed around by anyone. Brian is very good in his supporting role and I especially liked the weakness he managed to bring the character. Zachary Scott plays the man Crawford ends up marrying and is very good as well. Greenstreet played a lot of lovable bad guys in his career but that's not the case here because he's 100% bad and the actor steal the film playing the snake. Curtiz handles the material extremely well and he keeps everything moving at a very fast pace and thankfully things never slow down even when the plot becomes somewhat predictable. Fans of the cast are certainly going to want to check this one out.

mark.waltz And an evil sheriff is turning the crank. What he (Sydney Greenstreet) is unaware of is that a political outsider is about to unscrew the bolts that keep the crank oiled. The fat and disgusting Titus Semple, his weight a metaphor for his greasy demeanor, has everybody under his thumb, or runs them out of town on a prison trek if they don't pay him heed. He jokes that fat men are supposed to be happy but he has everybody fooled. Like the wicked witch of the west, he's amused by his beautiful wickedness. Who he doesn't fool is Laine Bellamy (Joan Crawford), the carny girl who remained behind and a victim of his calculating whims. She isn't afraid to stand up to the machine, daring to fall in love with aspiring politician Fielding Carlyle (Zachary Scott, Crawford's co-star in "Mildred Pierce"), and squelched by Semple's weasel like scheming. "You'd be surprised how much trouble it is to dispose of a dead elephant", she tells Greenstreet, having returned to town with a make-over thanks to her new husband, Dan Reynolds (David Brian), a big wheel from Washington D.C. determined to put small town viruses like Semple in their place.This is a gripping political drama, made the same year as the Oscar Winning "All the King's Men" and the lesser known "Alias Nick Beal". The focus here is on the woman behind the scenes, and Crawford is great, even if her masculine hairstyle makes her appear older than the character, especially in the opening carny scenes. Greenstreet revels in his villainy here even more so than in "The Maltese Falcon", his hatred of Crawford instant from the moment he sees her dining with his puppet. The wonderful Gladys George steals every scene she's in as the one person who sees through Laine (but likes her anyway!). When Ms. George warns Greenstreet that she's the only one who determines who works in her place and dismisses him like nobody else besides Crawford has dared (and that was with a slap across the face), you want to shout out "hurray!". Then, she tells Crawford how much more she likes her now that she knows how Greenstreet feels about her. You just wish this character had more scenes."I've crawled into a bottle and I can't get out", Scott reveals in a key scene as the weak Fielding, and it is obvious that his character will end up being destroyed by the machine that's been protecting him. This leads to the cards stacking up against practically every character with Semple's destruction only a matter of a plot twist or two away. This is movie soap opera at its best, and sure enough, in the early 1980's, it became one, albeit sadly briefly. But the original movie, which I must confess I didn't care for when first seeing it years ago, has stood the test of time, and today's political machine, still cranking away today, can be recognized in the cogs of the wheels turning here.

vincentlynch-moonoi This is a very powerful, and I believe underrated, film. And, I would have to disagree with some other reviewers that it's very much Joan Crawford's film. In my view this is a "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" film, and the big shot in question is Sydney Greenstreet. Here, Greenstreet is just about the most repulsive I've ever seen him in any role. And, incidentally, he made only one film after this one.While I feel it's Greenstreet's film, that's not to say Crawford isn't powerful here, as well. Imagine saying to Greenstreet: "You know sheriff; we had an elephant in our carnival with a memory like that. He went after a keeper that he'd held a grudge against for almost 15 years. Had to be shot. You just wouldn't believe how much trouble it is to dispose of a dead elephant." The film really wouldn't work without both of them, and they are forces to be reckoned with on the screen in this film.I think nowadays we've learned to be somewhat dismissive of Joan Crawford...partly due to her publicity as "Mommy Dearest", and partly due to some of the really rotten films she made in her declining years. But here she was near her peak, and so impressive.Another surprise (at least for me) in this film is Zachary Scott...never a particular favorite of mine...an actor I typically tolerate. But here, he is excellent! Perhaps the best role I've seen him in.David Bryan deserves mention here. He was never a big star, but we often saw him in films and then television. He does very nicely here, as do the other members of the cast.I highly recommend this film. The only negative comment I can make is that perhaps Joan Crawford didn't look the part...but she sure acted it!

Massimiliano Misturelli After several good and very good movies at Warner, Joan Crawford starred in this worn out JC's formula picture. The story of Lane Bellamy, a former carnival dancer who marries a wealthy man and is persecuted by a bully politician, is nothing but a dreadful imitation of the old carachters she' s been playing at MGM. Someone can call it camp, but it's just pure trash. It's a picture ahead of its time, meaning that you can only see such rubbish in the worst Brazilian "telenovelas" nowadays. Not to mention the fact that being in her early forties by that time, she was supposed to play a twenty something young woman. Poor Joan, if she only had waited one year or two, she could have learned from William Holden that " there is nothing tragic about being fifty, unless you want to be twenty five"