Change Your Image
loydmooney
Reviews
Yellow Sky (1948)
fabulous ending
William Wellman could break your heat better than almost anyone who ever got behind a camera. There are moments in each of his films that rank with Ford and Mann and Aldrich that are so gritty and realistic and moving that, well, he is just one of the best. The ending of Yellow Sky easily vies with the shootout of My Darling Clementine and Winchester 73 as absolutely brilliant. Each of the three are as different from the other as night and day, but wow, touch after touch keeps your eyes glue ever second to them.
The movie itself is pretty boring in a lot of places, but thats the price of this ticket.
One thing that should be mentioned, never has a western had not only so much night footage, but so little overall score. This Night and Silence has a pretty spooky effect and in some ways is the truest feel for the desert and west of any western ever made. Wellman did this same sort of thing a decade earlier with Beau Geste, using the Arizona desert around Yuma the same way, though here with Sky much better. There is simply no western like this ever made.
Wellman, Walsh, Ford, Mann. Thank goodness for them. Each of them. And again, be sure to catch the final scenes of Yellow Sky. Simply one of the best ever made.
Fun with Dick and Jane (2005)
why bother
Oh my lord, what were they thinking about with this one. It not only is frantically unfunny, but worse, a very good original was trashed in the bargain. Jane Fonda, believe it or not, actually turned in the performance of her life in that one. Even better than where she plays the whore in the other so called performance of her life. Maybe she is just flat good as a crook. Any other time, wow, what a waste of time. But she and Segal team up beautifully, so if you even remotely got a glimpse of anything funny in this baby, catch the anvil upon which it got beaten into a pulp from.
Because very very very little of that one remains, to this ones horror. Nothing in this baby is remotely funny except for maybe a couple of moments when Dick and Jane are bulging lipped up as lepers and cant kiss..... and uhh........oh my lord, that's it? Well, looks like it.
It truly is that bad a film.
Rolling Thunder (1977)
very fine last scene
The shootout at the end is up there with the one in LA Confidential. And the performances are all quite good. But the story as someone here has so ably picked up on, is very very stupid. Had Devane just been a vet that has seen too much smoke and blood and somehow or the other then got his hand whacked off, well it would have made more sense. I guess. So its no wonder Tarantino likes the story, considering how little sense most of his make either.
But the shootout is a marvel. Very nice buildup, and both Devane and Jones deliver the goods in the whorehouse.
And the song at the end, somehow is particularly haunting. Also nice that the story is set in and around San Antonio. Its just too bad they had to go out of their way to make this so ridiculously ridiculous. It could have been a taut tale in the right hands.
American Gigolo (1980)
pretty darn good
Odd that the song drew me back to this film. Upon first viewing I liked it but it slipped under the water past me it was so silently good, despite the blaring soundtrack. Hindsight, looks like it and Officer were the only Gere movies even worth watching for more than a few seconds.
Talk about a career of just hanging around doing ludicrous movie after ludicrous for several decades. That's persistance. Yet this really is kind of a luscious film, so it's even more ridiculous, from luscious to ludicrous. Too bad.
The ending mars it, bit sappy. Not that it somehow should not have ended on that note, but just something else than, and here is the spoiler, his doing the Jimmy Cagney bit behind bars hollering Ma, to Hutton (just kidding, but its almost that bad), no reason he has to wind up with the cuffs on. It would have made it much worse if he had been found down in some dirt floor Mexican bar, eyes swimming in Tequila. Maybe even on the run. But of course, as Sturges says, thats another plot.
Anyway, one of the best takes on the emptiness, the real horror of materialism ever done. B r a v o. The only other example I can think of beating it is the scene in De Palmas Scarface when Pacino is looking around in the restaurant saying, Is this all there is. This is all there is. And starts taunting all the rich suits and disguised whores in the room.
Ulzana's Raid (1972)
wow
It is precisely this kind of western that shows what happens when the spaghetti westerns hit the fan. The realism of something like this utterly shames them into silence and their dumb close ups of bloodshot eyes and badly dubbed mouths. This is the real deal.
If somebody said it is the most powerful western ever made, they would get no argument from me. Even the dust in this film is grittier than any I ever saw. Robert Aldrich would laugh his big gut off, however, at all the suggestions of this being a Vietnam allegory: read some of his wry commentaries about other highfalluten misreadings of his stuff, especially his Mickey Spillane opus. Nope this is just one great western without any leakage from the twentieth century thank you, in fact, just the opposite, it does about as good a job of really transporting you to the nineteenth and the west as there is.
Man, what a good director Robert Aldrich was. One of the last of the really good ones.
Syriana (2005)
don't bother
Well I walked out on this pretty closely in. It was going all over the place nowhere fast. Complexity for complexities sake is always tiresome, but on top of it once it started getting into the politics of Iran it might as well have been Oz. The Ozbow Incident maybe. Just joking. The reality of Iran was nonexistent. This baby will cast no shadow on history, moviewise or middle east.
But then again I thought Traffic was equally soporific, so there you are.
Just glad I got to see the little of it I did, gratis. Most of the time it felt like these guys had about five current magazines in front of them ripping out whatever news they were coming across about the middle east and just scrambling it up.
Jarhead (2005)
what a laugh
Movies are a very funny thing. Namely that no matter what you make short of a blank screen for two hours, oops, I started to say short of that or staring at a picture of just the Empire State building for eight hours,some people will watch anything and give it rave huzzahs. Certainly so in this case, going by the 7.3. of this grass growing, paint drying thing.
Okay, I get it. I got it in the first few frames. In fact those first few frames were about the only grabbing things in the whole movie.
Why this one ever got shot is beyond me.
Good thing I had a free pass, or I would have felt like storming the box office in a class action suit.
Rio Conchos (1964)
a very good bad western
There are moments in this film that are some of the most outstanding in all westerns. The rest is tripe. The opening is OK, but the first bits of great, great dialog comes with Boone and Francioso in the guardhouse. Keep your ears open, some nice exchanges. Then after Boone is brought in with Warner Anderson, he fills the screen, really begins to strut his stuff. Keep both your ears and eyes open when he toasts the Colonel and says with that quizzical look after Anderson has asked him to give his word: My word???? (pause) Colonel, you've got it.
But thats not all. After the wagon load of gun powder gets rolling, and they are trapped by bandits, comes some of the finest seven minutes of laughter fraught danger ever filmed. (yes even better than the stuff with the bandit in Treasure of Sierra Madre) Where they dug up the bandit leader for this is almost beyond belief: his teeth sticking out from his gums almost like in a horror movie every time he giggles.
Just an amazing scene.
Though not long before that there is another great scene with Boone and Francioso talking about young Francioso thinks the looks and how old Boone KNOWS he does.
Very very funny.
But one of the viewers were absolutely right. Francioso throughout is a little irritating, but just didn't quite get it analyzed. Its the accent. A Mexican accent that came from Woolworths. Only one worse in all cinema. Paul Newmans in The Outrage. Which he got out of a cereal box with coupons. Both of them are really very, very embarrassing.
Nevertheless, do not miss the first thirty minutes for this stuff. It's fabulous. And the entire film is Boone at the top of his form. But after the first thirty minutes the thing degenerates fast in cardboard clichés, never a good bet for a strong finish. Still stick around for the first third and you will have caught one of the best Boones of them all.
And Boone at his best was one of the best.
Junior Bonner (1972)
Peckinpah's best
There are not many films that deserve a ten, they are too patchy, but this one is solid from first to last. It just has no holes. The Wild Bunch has plenty boring patches, the rest of Peckinpah is even worse, and great as the Wild Bunch is, this is my favorite Peckinpah. The Wild Bunch is searing and heartbreaking, but Junior Bonner is the other bookend, the most endearing family film I ever saw.
It just flat has no weaknesses. Everybody is so good in it, it captures the exact feel of the modern west, great dialog, and it is on top of everything else, so unassuming. It hides just how good it is at every frame.
My hunch is that even Peckinpah didn't realize how good it was.
Three words.
Don't miss it.
The Ice Harvest (2005)
badly suffering from noiritis
Too bad boys, not even a good try. Whatever you were thinking when you started this mess, you wound up with just another wannabe noir. And looks like you aren't pulling the wool over most of us here. We all seem to feel the same. The, well, I started to say plot, but there is none, but whatever else you want to call it just keeps on going nowhere. You feel sorry for all concerned, that in the middle of this they must have known what a dog they had on their hands and started mailing in their emotions. The femme fatale stuff was especially embarrassing. And I once thought the Cohen Brothers were that. But it's stuff like this that makes them look like wizards.
Not a frame I want to see again, and I sat through the whole thing.
Shameful.
Professione: reporter (1975)
don't bother
Sometimes it seems that any slop by a great artist if thrown up slow enough will dazzle the ones sick of glitzy Hollywood slop. But slop is slop whether tossed from a speeding car or trickling down a wall, and this slop moves even slower than that.
Antonioni is a great artist. L'aventura proves that amazingly and forever.
La Notte is also pretty good. And L'eclisse, also in that league. Too many for an accident, but then he started going into his own leclisse, and this is part of that final run.
It is ugly ugly ugly, very badly shot in stupid locations, and with about as much spy reality as a comic book.
Antonioni knows his bored bourgeoisie down to their carefully manicured nails and thin smiles, but should have left the sub rosa stuff to Le Carre.
Watch L'aventura for the third or forth time for your Antonioni fix. Or if you need a good snooze and they let you snore in your seats then this is just the one .
A History of Violence (2005)
recherché
This is a retread of fairly obvious ideas that have been handled much more masterfully by much greater directors. The notion of the violence lurking within us all has to be done and redone so many times that it is going to take something a lot better than this to move me very deeply.
That said, I watched the whole thing. Near the end was a little ashamed to have done so, especially once he arrives back at the castle, the whole business of the brothers fighting it out, and then the obligatory tossing the gun into the water in a renunciation of everything he has become. Very clumsy stuff, and then the Quaker scene at the end was even more clumsy.
Maybe the best of all time for the guy who can't escape his past is the great Anthony Mann western, Man of the West. The gang he returns to is much more scary, the fight Gary Cooper gets into is absolutely raw.
However, the rapelove scene, whatever it is in History, near the last third, is powerful. Wonderfully shot in the stairwell, relentless, shocking. For it alone, I was glad I had almost wasted a good two hours in a theater. Like the crash scene in Aviator, it kept me from saying, ahh suckered again by all the wild reviews. Still it is pretty sorry when about all there really is new in a movie is one scene. So you pays your money and takes your choice.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)
walked out on it fast
In fact, walked out on it in less than a half hour. With no regrets. Found it trying so hard to be clever and different that it rapidly became a parody of itself. For films that know they are films, the Road pictures of Hope and Crosby were much more sprightly and spontaneous. For upending of genres, what's the point. There are ridiculous private eye pictures, and great ones, and the great ones hardly need skewering, and even the mediocre ones have more of a point than this frantic rambling of whispered comebacks. And here comes a spoiler: spotted even before I left this babbling baby: Downey and his girl are the same age, supposedly. Well 43 or 45 whatever his makeup is trying hard to hide sure ain't 28 or 33, unless that's the new math.
But if you want somebody telling you this is a great one, there's plenty here for that. And they are right, at least this is not your standard fare. But it sure didn't work for me.
Two for the Money (2005)
run from the money
I will leave it to my bettors, uhh, betters here to gape and gawk at this wonderful wonderawful movie, and just say that I thought it stunk. The great thing about this site is you always get a variety of views, and seek them out, by all means. No telling what you will come out of the film with. For me, the ones who saw through the simplicities and shenanigans of it have my money. There was one, dead on perfect when he pointed out the two grand moments of the thing, which belong to Pacino. The meeting and the airport. Other than that, well, what a waste of time. Utterly. Pacino is just doing the same thing over and over and over, he would have been better served by taking the performance down about five notches at about the level of his protégé. Everybody always says, but this movie could have been so much better. Sure they all could have been. But really most of them just should never have been made. Including this one.
The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005)
less than meets the eye
Well, well, Paxton is saying to himself, I can try to go whole hog and make a really terrific movie about golf, keeping a true grip on it, or shamelessly exploit the kiddies, the many many little tykes that the big people will take to see this baby. And, hell, they are easy to fool. So, is there really any choice. Nope. Okay kids, you got it. Even though you don't understand the word, laddies, this is gonna be a really meretricious piece of hokum that will fool you all the way.
It is too. But a warning should be issued for anybody over 15 and or 5 feet tall: don't believe a single instant of this tale supposedly torn from life. It is as rife with anachronism as a summer porch in the Midwest is with flies, and reflects what actually went on at that famous Open just about like a funhouse mirror on wheels.
If you want a really good feel good sports movie, catch Seabiscut again. Much much better hokum.
Meanwhile, there still has not been a really accurate golf movie ever made, unless msynr in some parallel universe. This one only does have the feel of something being played with a little white ball over lotsa grass on LSD.
But the kids will love it.
The Searchers (1956)
very overrated
This film is easily the most overrated of all time. Talk about a bandwagon climbed on by the purely hypnotized. However to give the film its due, there are seven or eight moments and a few scenes that are some of the greatest in westerns. The first is when the searching party comes upon the buried dead Indian. Fabulous. Second is when Wayne rides out of the canyon. Blows you away. Wow. The third is when he yells at Harry Carry Jr. Whew. Then the fight on the river is great for four. Five his comment to Jeffrey Hunter about the turning of the earth. Six when they come upon the hostages. Breaks your heart. And seven, the entire scene with Scar, and the Comancheros. Very strong.
But that's it. The rest of the thing is either pure hokum, boring stuff back at the ranch with the idiot in the rocking chair and or Ken Curtis.
And as for Waynes' best performance, wrong. He was every bit as good in Red River, if not better. Just because he did less yelling there, he was fabulous. Hawks handled him every bit as well as Ford.
Anyone who can sit through about 7/8s of this film with rapt attention is very forgiving indeed. I suspect it is the sheer power of its few astonishing scenes that brings on the rest of the nonsense about this movie. Man of the West, My Darling Clemintine, Winchester 73 and at least 20 other westerns are much much better than this baby. However not throw it out with the bathwater, when it is good, it is fabulous.
The Great Raid (2005)
very strange war film
There are some strange things about this film that nobody seems to have noticed. But before delving into them probably this should be said: to a certain extent it is a throwback to way films used to be made, separating itself from the host of films done the last few years.
First of all it is a rah rah picture, not so different from the host of world war two propaganda pictures. It seems to me a more realistic picture, although also nodding towards the rah rah a little was something like Objective Burma. Errol Flynn's captain under the direction of Walsh was the more enjoyable performance.
Somebody mentioned the music as being fine. Not to me. Actually for years now music in films has been so over-hyped and pounding it is bothersome, this film could have been done with a lot less of that. And as for realism, well to have not one soldier use the F word, to anybody in the service, is fantasyland.
Not that I missed it. Glad I didn't have to listen to a lot of swearing, but I had the feeling that Dahl was doing it out of some strange respect to the actual very brave men who made the raid.
Even so, the Raid was fairly well done, but for me the most gripping scenes were with the nurse. And Manila had a very nice feel to it.
All in all no more than a five for this, but I am glad it was made as a reminder of just how price was paid by the men of world war two. And compared to the junk that is made anymore, its a classic.
Wedding Crashers (2005)
bad all the way
Perhaps this movie really does portend the end of civilization as we know it. The acting was terrible, the jokes refried, can it be that its good premise was enough to seduce the audience. Probably. It has all the earmarks of a pitch grown to hasty green light and a wild time had by the cast at the world's expense.
Look at Walken for instance, I felt sorry for him, he should have known better, unless he just needs the money.
It is symptomatic however of how low standards have fallen for comedy. And how easy it is to make people laugh. Having walked out on Meet The Fokkers after the first fifteen minutes, I can say that this is not quite as inane, but is equally unfunny.
Thank goodness there is a minimum of ten lines here. I honestly can't think of anything good to say about this movie. What a bad summer for films so far, and this is keeping up that high standard. How about a zero out of ten. But alas, I have to give it a one, nothing lower.
Night Passage (1957)
surprising
Night Passage is unusual in that Audie Murphy actually turns in a more interesting performance than Stewart. Someone else here has caught that Audie is at his absolute best here. Though actually he is equally good in John Huston's The Unforgiven. Those two are his centerpiece renditions.
The movie itself is really pretty stupid, yet rises far far above said same by the main performers. Anytime Murphy is on the screen it comes electrically alive. Here we see the baby faced killer at his most terrifying. Look up his Colmar Forest action in world war two and you will see that he was the real deal, and his twisted smiles are positively psycho in this one, and even crazier is that he is playing it all one stop below Dan Duryeas supposedly even wilder psychosis. When they are on the screen together it's almost Laurel and Hardy with guns, very very funny stuff in a totally fraught way.
Here comes a spoiler. So if you are going to see the movie first, I would suggest you skip this paragraph. It revolves around a very curious feature of Stewart. Nobody ever did one thing in the entire history of cinema and got away with it more naturally than Sir James. And he does it again here. Crying. Repeatedly he has broken into tears so believably, so touchingly, that nobody ever noticed. Yet time and again he does it, in Naked Spur, Its a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, Night Passage. In Night Passage right at the end just watch him break down so heart breakingly with the line.....no, I'll ....I'll take care of my brother.
Very very moving. Also I have mentioned elsewhere that nobody ever received physical punishment so horrifyingly as Stewart. Far Country, Bend of the River, Man From Laramie, Winchester 73 (all Mann westerns) he does it so well you wince: this is what is must actually look like when people are shot or burned or beaten. Just amazing what the guy could do, and do it more believably than Brando, great as Brando was. Yet all that said, Murphy for once gives the more interesting performance, because this is the perfect vehicle for his killer mentality. After all the guy did sleep with a service 45. under his pillow until the day he died.
Night Passage was his best.
The Far Country (1954)
fairly good
The five or so really good westerns that Mann made are unequaled as an ensemble in Hollywood. Even John Ford never made that many with so much quality. The curious thing about them all is how uneven they are. Ford's My Darling Clementine is worth about two and a half of any of them. Or at least two.
The real hero of them besides Mann and Stewart is Chase. Chase being responsible for the brilliant Red River. Chase wrote far country, bend of the river, and probably some others. But none of them are as finished as My Darling Clementine, but then very few films, western or otherwise are.
Each of the five films of Mann have huge gaps, or is it six, lets see. Bend, Far, Man of the West, Furies, Winchester 73, and yep, six, Naked Spur. Each have magnificent scene after magnificent scene, with fairly glaring lapses. Yet so does Red River, which is still the single greatest western ever made. So perfection isn't everything.
But The Far Country has huge, huge holes. It's mawkish, and really comes alive only when Stewart and Mc Entire are locking horns. The rest is pretty pedestrian, with the usual exception of Mann's camera. Mann's camera is a one man course in cinematography. It is about as good an eye as anybody who ever got behind a strip of moving film. It is almost never in the wrong place, never.
The Far Country has one amazing moment. And as usual it comes from Stewart. Nobody in the history of cinema ever received physical punishment with the authority of that man. He is absolutely amazing: look at him in Bend, Far, Winchester, and Man from Laramie: in Bend has been beaten up and is hanging by a thread so believably and with such boiling hatred he looks like somebody displaced from Dachau, in Far he is shot off a raft with such violence, it looks so convincing that you wince, and of course when he is dragged through the fire in Man, well you find yourself looking for the burn marks. What an actor. Not to mention the moment in Winchester when he is beaten up early in the hotel room, also as well as anybody ever did it.
But that was Mann's territory: look at Gary Cooper fighting with Jack Lord in Man of the West. As painful as any fight scene ever recorded. Cooper while not being quite as convincing as Stewart, nevertheless is somehow his equal in looking exhausted at the end of the fight. In short, nobody but nobody but nobody ever showed the human being in extremis as well as Mann.
What a great, great director.
See every western he ever made. They are his real monuments, even if all are scetchy. But so what. When he gets roaring with his great scenes they are as good as anybody, including Ford. And his six westerns as an ensemble are the best ever done by anyone, period.
Thanks, Anthony.
My Darling Clementine (1946)
absolute best
In all cinema there have only been a few great westerns. And even they are pocked with long longueurs, many of of even the most powerful. This baby ain't one of them. If anything it may just be too pretty. Its black and white is the most beautiful of all time. Camera always in the right place, just amazing. And adding to it was how Ford denigrated the film. Said it was a studio job. Lordy lordy.
Somehow, overall, Red River still seems to me to be the greater work, but barely, barely. Clementine is more perfect. After them, everything else falls in line behind.
Walter Brennen, of course, is in both. In Red, he plays a nice guy, here he is one of the most venomous villains ever. Period. What a range the guy had, see both back to back for the full effect.
Forget authenticity of any sort with Clementine. There is nothing in this picture that is real except the sand. The rest has been mythologized into pure apotheosis, and is more than enough.
The shootout is amazing. Pound for pound perhaps the greatest extended piece of cinema ever. For fifteen minutes, or so, absolutely flawless. And notice no background music, even in a single moment of those fifteen, which no director in a sound picture has ever done in a western before or since. It's just amazing how good it is, and shows that Ford, despite his disclaimer, knew what he had.
He was not about to mar it with even a smidgen of music.
One of the top ten films ever made by an American.
Colorado Territory (1949)
poetic
In the entire history of western movies, there have been very few shot through with poetic dialog. The Wild Bunch is one of them. The dialog is in fact so poetic that it is hard to miss, and more than once its quality has been noted by various well known film critics.
Colorado Territory, pound for pound is easily its equal. And why? Not Walsh, not Mc Crae, not any of the usual reasons given. In fact if you look at Walsh's other western works, and they are numerous and fine, none of them come close to this one in it's poetry. So either you chalk it up to just sheer luck, or you have to look elsewhere. Yet before I point to that reason, let's look at some of the lines...which probably will be considered a spoiler so, if you don't to hear any of the talk find a review without spoilers, and here goes: we're a couple of fools in a dead village dreaming about something that'll never happen... or earlier Mc Crae is warning two of his outlaw companions about being careful not to double cross him, and tells them about two others that tried to, and says.....they're buried outside Lawrence Kansas. Prettiest little bone orchard you'd ever want to see. Little stone angels watching over them.........or later Mc Crae is telling Pluffner, the railroad detective that has double crossed him, and now Mc Crae has found him out....robbing the dead....and the detective turns and exclaims his innocence, that the man he is robbing his died naturally, that its all part of the game, Mc Crae comes back with.... .... not this game, there's been so much bottom dealing from this deck it's dog eared..................and proceeds to shoot the detective.
Yet this was not the last time that western lovers would be treated to such wonderful stuff, except they would have to go to other directors, one being Stuart Heisler, and DALLAS.
Or Andre De Toth and SPRINGFIELD RIFLE.
The key ingredient in all this not being the director but a writer that heretofore has gone completely unnoticed by virtually any critic. Namely John Twist.
John Twist along with Borden Chase were the two finest writers of western cinema, period. Chase was, is, of course well known. Twist has for some reason been invisible. However one day, some discerning crew with get together for a retrospective of his films and the charade will be over. But trust me, western lovers, see his name on any film and you can always count on some of the best dialog ever written for westerns. Colorado Territory being his best.
As for the other comments here about the movie, they are pretty right on. This film is the equal overall of any of Mann's films, Boettichers, is better than most of Ford's, in fact only slightly below Red River and My Darling Clementine.
The only flaw is a rather mawkish handling of the Dorothy Malone situation: the whole business with her slows things down a bit. But anytime Mc Crae is not around her the film is about as perfect as a western can get.
Don't miss is.
Decision at Sundown (1957)
bad all the way
well, Budd came a cropper with this one, folks. Easily the worst of his collection. About the only interesting thing in the whole stew is getting to see Scott with some stubble.
The rest hardly makes much sense at all. Down to the fact that nothing makes sense. Not even clear is why Randolph is so peeved about his wife. Just what did Carroll do to her to cause her to do what she did to herself. Even less clear is why twenty five or thirty guys supposedly in the dire grip of Carroll cannot rush two, or maybe even one and a half guys in livery stable.
Odd how the name Boettecher can elicit blind hosannas of praise,no matter how half ass-ed the job: this time the emperor is naked as a jaybird. Without even a decent joke. Oh wait. Not exactly a joke, but when Noah Berry Jr. finally gets his vittles, the woman serving them does a pretty good job of disguising her real intentions. Every other character is as cardboard as a marked poker deck.
Any western that Andre de Toth ever turned out, no matter how bad, always at least had three or four good moments. This one barely had one. Too bad Budd.
Charley Varrick (1973)
a keeper
Put this one not far under Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Don Seigel had a rather clumsy eye: for the greats you have to go to Hitch, Mann, and a few others, but that was about all he lacked. There are usually so many jewels scattered in one of his films you have to go back through them four or five times to pick up most of them. Oddly he said he could not figure why they always typed him as an action director. Well, he was. He kept things zipping along, but done so , well so well, so subtly, with so much realism AND humor that he had only one real rival, Andre De Toth and a minor one Robert Aldrich. All three fine, fine directors. Most of the other comments here cover his plusses. All that is really left is the absolute dead on dead bang do nothing style of Matthau, the only other performance along those lines being Peter Reigert in Local Hero. There is a grittiness about both that seems they were done in one take, nearly perfect every time, the casualness of reality. This is a seven and a half to eight if there ever was one.
Ministry of Fear (1944)
great moments
This is a strange Lang film. It is a pure programmer, somewhat along the lines of Hitchcock, but because Lang did not get much of his way with it, the reins largely being in the hands of the producer/writer Seton Miller, well....thereby hangs the warping something he had wanted to do for a long time, and would have done had not the film rights been bought up long before.
So we will never see anything as of a piece say as Big Heat, yet some of the set pieces are as good as anything Lang ever did.
Getting rid of the detritus first, much of the time the film is absolutely leaden. However there are a few good moments at the carnival where Milland gets his cake, and then on the train with the cake...and from here on we are going into some spoilers, so don't read any further if you have not seen the film.
After the train is bombed, there is a hokey but absolutely pure Lang scene during the seance with Hillary Brooke. Hitchcock would probably have handled it differently and it would have been interesting to see how it would have differed from Lang. Lang's noir came from a deeper, purer UFA strain under which Hitch studied: while this not being the place to go into Hitch's style, Lang's approach was always much more primitive: his blacks were the blackest of the bunch, his terror was always meaner if not deeper than Hitch's largely because Lang really did escape from some of the meanest and baddest of Europe, the Nazis, and in film after film, the terrors he summons often have all the suddeness and starkness of a knock on the door at midnight...out of nowhere. Lang's blacks were always a pool from thugs and monsters to emerge with a gun. His blacks were the purest of anybody who ever got behind a camera, and his Nazis still the most terrifying of them all.
That said, after the seance, and the shooting there, his escape and running from the police is pretty idiotic, probably because of the poor script of Seton Miller. Only until the bombing of the room, and Millands waking up does the film take on real life again.
The person playing the cop is something else, however. Lang has the man give one of the most unusual takes on a cop in the history of cinema. The hunting for the cake in the ruins takes place on a set but does not suffer at all, much as they do in a Hitchcock with no damage. Much of the scene is also very hokey but is quite good. Then after the cake is found, the rest of the film is superb. Once they trace the microfilm to the tailor shop, wow, great stuff. The rain was never handled better, and the scene at the tailor is a good as anything Lang ever did. And even the final shootout is quite good. Only the last frames of the end betrays whom ultimately was controlling the film: Seton Miller tacks on a hack absolutely stupid ending that Lang must have felt like crawling into five bottles of Johnny Walkers. It's embarrassing. Yet Dan Duryea and Ray Milland and the man playing the Scotland Yard cop are about as good as anything that came out of Hollywood that year. Strange that a movie only rating an overall 3 or 4 could have a few not only good but really great, almost seminal noir scenes.
My own feeling is that Lang's best film is Manhunt. It is tight and watchable all the way through from first to last. But there are a few moments in Ministry up to the very best of that. Too few, unfortunately, but even so, Lang at his best, even minimally was always better than the vast mediocrities of most of the forties and fifties. Hang around for the few great moments of this baby and you won't ask for your money back.