Popular reviews

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  Review by Steve G 🇵🇸 🇾🇪 ★★★★★ 4

  To be someone must be a wonderful thing,
  A famous footballer, a rock singer,
  Or a big film star, yes I think I would like that.
  To be rich and have lots of fans,
  Have lots of girls to prove that I'm a man
  And be number one - and liked by everyone.

  The Jam: To Be Someone

  Even when Richard Widmark stops running in Night And The City, you always feel as though he's standing on his tip-toes ready to launch himself towards the nearest exit and away from the latest person that he's diddled.

  Widmark's performance, one of the very best in a stunning career that surely has never received the extremely high level of praise that it…

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★

  an artist without an art. one of the sweatiest, most desperate and panicked noirs i've seen; thoroughly depressing scumbag failure cinema.

  full discussion on ep 199 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 4

  "You had brain, ambition, you worked harder than any other man, but the wrong things, always the wrong things."

  For Jules Dassin, everything is work and money. Night and the City is all about growing up and making a living (regular, steady labor) vs. quick, easy, big money (all capital, no labor). The protagonist is right in between: he puts a lot of labor into his endeavors, but the endeavors he invests in are always the kind of ill-advised but exciting projects that promise a lot but deliver a little. He has an amazing energy, but he doesn't know how to direct it. His only flaw is not being able to live a boring life—perhaps the central tragedy of film noir.

  "You've done a sharp thing. Sharp enough to cut your throat."

  Film Noir ranked

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★½ 16

  Spoilers ahead for both Night and the City and, in the second section, House of Bamboo.

  SPACES
  Night and the City is a film of which every frame is a work of art. Each moment is meticulously composed, from the camera placement and its angle to the objects that clutter (or don't clutter) the screen. From the body shapes and positions of the people confined within the cell of the frame to the threats and memories that loom outside. It's intimidating in its mastery, and ferociously effective in its chilly perfection.

  Each and every set is dressed and designed within an inch of its life.* Nosseross' (Francis L. Sullivan) office is jarring from almost every angle, with the odd mix…

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  Review by Joe ★★★★★ 1

  Totally impeccable craft, the climactic wrestling match is right up there with the heist in Rififi, just heart-stopping (who knew an AFS crowd could get so invested in wrestling), but it still gains so much from Widmark's performance. He plays a hustler so edgy and desperate to make good he doesn't even seem to have the luxury of any internal thoughts, it all comes out one way or the other. Highest caliber noir.

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  Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★½ 16

  One to file swiftly under my favourite noir sub genre of ‘man who can outrun all but stops short of out-running only himself’ anchored by a truly sweaty, slimy Richard Widmark; sliding through these grubby, caved-in cobbled streets of London’s fair city with all the skittish moxie of the grease monkey who’s stung his last swindle and knows it all too well, but trips up on his own pool of childish ambition meets smoke-up-the-ass smarm dressed in the ill-fitting suit of well-earned charisma regardless — like the kid who just can’t say no to kicking the bees bonnet knowing he’ll get stung every time without fail.

  Such unrestrained, strike a match and you’ll find a fire chaos, that any whiz…

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  Review by seb ★★★★

  "Born a hustler, you’ll die a hustler."

  An ugly, rough representation of the underground, filled with nothing but hatred and nihilism, very much fitting for a blacklisted director in exile. The streets of London are gritty, the locations reek of filth and Richard Widmark plays one incredibly desperate man, an artist without an art, as one of the other characters describes him. Night and the City might drenched in noir tropes, but there is still something very distinct about its presentation and unraveling.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★

  75/100

  A.V. Club review. I go back and forth on Tierney's role here. She's given squat to do, and the inclusion of Hugh Marlowe as her character's replacement fella—it's not even clear why that dude is in the movie until he shows up to embrace her at the end—reeks of studio-dictated compromise. At the same time, though, her unfailing virtuousness feels almost radical in this context: anti-fatale.

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  Review by Elwood B. ★★★★½

  "You've got it all, but you are a dead man, Harry Fabian!"

  Richard Widmark playing a crook is as rare as brown M&Ms. It must be that big forehead, that just immediatly screams "yeah, I'm not to be trusted". But what his characters lack in facial consistency, they have in heart. His motives seem to be egogistical at first but once he sees his love for the very last time, not even the biggest of doubters would dispute the sincerity of his confession.

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  Review by Ben Peterson ★★★★½ 3

  An outlier of film noir in that the antagonist is the "good guy" and is EXACTLY why this movie works as well as it does. He, Kristo (played exquisitely by Herbert Lom), is the only person in the movie who ain't a putz. He's the only one that sees through literally everyone's mess, protagonist Richard Widmark included. It's only right that the movie's last shot belongs to him, and what a scene it is for the linchpin character.

  Also, in London in the 1950s, one could evidently get some loose cigs out of claw machines.

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  Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★½ 4

  Perspiring in a state of desperation from your misplaced ambitions; you run from everyone, but most of all, you’re running from yourself. Shortcomings make a man do the damndest things and like a painter without a brush or a singer without a chorus, the con man without his con is sure to implode. Grapple with your fate—try as you might, it’s no use in wrestling with the inevitable. A one way ticket to your self-inflicted demise awaits you.

  London Bridge is falling down, and you are underneath it.

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  Review by Willow Maclay 2

  Clear proof that the bear hug can still be just as exciting as any other professional wrestling maneuver.