SO AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yes, I mean every one of the exclamation points.
It's the last reel that kills you.
Seriously.
UCLA FTV Archive did a *spectacular* job restoring this honey of a film. Wowsers. Looked great in 35mm too....Phew!

A sweeping condemnation of consumerism, the American media, and, most blatantly, McCarthyism. The noir tinged narrative gets hamstrung late in the movie by some inelegantly blunt theme stating by a character whose only function seems to be to directly address the social problems at hand. The climax, even on my second viewing, is almost unbearably harrowing, though, and makes this easily one of the best political films of its time. Lloyd Bridges is a maniac.

Reviewed in my coverage of the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival >>

SO AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yes, I mean every one of the exclamation points.
It's the last reel that kills you.
Seriously.
UCLA FTV Archive did a *spectacular* job restoring this honey of a film. Wowsers. Looked great in 35mm too....Phew!

Opening night of Noir City 2013.

Try and Get Me! (retitled from The Sound of Fury) starts as a "regular Joe turns to crime to feed his family" story, but the paths of said Joe, Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy), experienced crook Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges), and hot-shot newspaper reporter Gil Stanton (Richard Carlson) combine to form an unexpected boiling point that draws from director Cy Endfield's own experiences. All three leads are great (plus a simultaneously comic / tragic performance by Katherine Locke as a naive girl swept up in the fray), and the last third is a dramatic knockout, drawing to an angry finish that's hard to shake.

Hopefully someone gets a good DVD out sooner rather than later; this 35mm restoration (which Scorsese and Alexander Payne contributed to, along with fellow Seattle critic Sean Axmaker) looks and sounds great.

A sweeping condemnation of consumerism, the American media, and, most blatantly, McCarthyism. The noir tinged narrative gets hamstrung late in the movie by some inelegantly blunt theme stating by a character whose only function seems to be to directly address the social problems at hand. The climax, even on my second viewing, is almost unbearably harrowing, though, and makes this easily one of the best political films of its time. Lloyd Bridges is a maniac.

An Italian man tries to teach America about morality says "violence is a disease caused by moral and social breakdown, that is the real problem and it must be solved by reason, not by emotion. With understanding, not hate." Naturally the director Cy Endfield got blacklisted.

"A man is out of work and struggling financially, he gets work acting as a (reluctant) getaway driver and witnesses a murder. The effect of the local newspaper upon its readers is shown very effectively as the murderer and his unwilling accomplice become victims of 'mob justice'. The film is otherwise rather melodramatic, but the vigilante mob was very believable, perhaps tabloid journalists should watch the film as a warning."

Sub-par Noir with a heavy-handed message. Even IMDb spoils the ending.