Synopsis
I want a man … not a human punching bag!
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
1949 Directed by Robert Wise
Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
Robert Ryan Audrey Totter George Tobias Alan Baxter Wallace Ford Percy Helton Hal Baylor Darryl Hickman Kevin O'Morrison James Edwards David Clarke Phillip Pine Edwin Max Herbert Anderson Larry Anzalone Arthur Berkeley Burman Bodel John Butler Noble 'Kid' Chissell Bud Cokes Heinie Conklin Gene Delmont Abe Dinovitch Paul Dubov Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig Dan Foster David Fresco Joseph Glick Bernard Gorcey Show All…
Nadie puede vencerme, 出卖皮肉的人, Nous avons gagné ce soir, Stasera ho vinto anch'io, 我们赢了今夜, Ring frei für Stoker Thompson, Combat trucat, Podvod, Подстава, Punhos de Campeão, 셋업, Zmowa, Knock-out
Avenging angels duke it out against mere mortals in Paradise City.
“The Set-Up,” Robert Wise’s tale of a boxer on his last legs, clocked in with the concept of a drama unfolding in real time three years before “High Noon.” This idea alone is enough to put “Set-Up” in a weight class with the cinematic classics.
Wise goes a step farther, though — employing the burden of the seconds passing as a constant reminder of fragile mortality. This - like the sharp black and white cinematography - stands in contrast to the godlike framing of the boxers featured.
Wise and cinematographer Milton R. Krasner film the work’s central skirmish as if it were a Renaissance fresco depicting a battle between…
I looked up film noir in the dictionary and all there was was a picture of this film and a middle finger pointing at me.
"Don't ya see Bill, you're always one punch away."
Robert Wise's The Set-Up is the story of Stoker, a boxer widely considered to have left his best years behind him at the age of 35. He has a shot at a 23 year old kid who he truly believes that he can beat, and that when he does he will finally get his chance at the title. There's just one problem - no one else believes he can win. His wife is fed up with his losses and apparent inability to face reality and hang up the gloves. It's become harder and harder for her to see him lose, so much so that she can't even bring herself to attend this…
"You'll always be just one punch away."
Fantastic real-time boxing noir about an aging fighter who never truly found the success he was looking for in the grotesquely-detailed backstage business of brutalized flesh for money, and in a twist of irony, after years of pain and indignity he has one last burst of life, one last real fight in him on the same night that the entire economic system he subscribes to counts on his failure. His personal glory directly tied to to an abyss he has no choice but to answer to. Some really sharp images and cutting, and about as lean, mean and direct as a movie like this gets.
"Don't you see, Bill? You'll always be just one punch away."
Former Orson Welles editor Robert Wise manages a lean noir classic with The Set-Up. Liberally adapted by screenwriter Art Cohn from a 1928 long narrative poem by Joseph Moncure March, the scenario chronicles a fateful day in the life of washed-up prizefighter Bill "Stoker" Thompson (Robert Ryan). Riding an extensive losing streak already, Thompson is slated as sacrificial fodder for up-and-comer Tiger Nelson (Hal Fieberling). Convinced that his fighter has no chance to win, Thompson's double-dealing manager Tiny (George Tobias) strikes a deal with cagey gangster Little Boy (Alan Baxter) to throw the bout without bothering to inform Thompson—who would then have to be cut in of course. Propelled…
Robert Wise was the sort of person who showed that a "TV director" could be unbelievably cinematic if they learned the right lessons. This thing has less fat on it than a fighter at a weigh-in, and it's even nice enough to give you all the tonal information you need in that opening scene, where an old and disheveled crier timidly offering copies of a boxing programme is callously shoved aside by a proper kid newsboy who can only sneer at the man's meek protest "I gotta make a dollar, too!" This is a world filled with has-beens and never-weres, all of whom are literally and figuratively beaten down and who are so wretched they cannot even extend empathy to…
Ryan's boxer is on such a bad run that his own corner dont even bother to tell him the fix is in, he's bound to lose anyway.
Occasionally a little too obvious and stagey, particularly where Audrey Totter and some of the locker room characters are concerned this is more than redeemed by Ryan's quiet performance of dignity and power and by the unbelievable cinematography.
There really is very little in the world of cinema that can compete with the way RKO lit Robert Ryan's face in the late 40s.
The black and white photography is so crisp and yet so sweaty, it combines with some perfect casting and costuming of bit parts to constantly give you perfectly realised characters.…
Joseph Moncure March was inspired to write his poem “The Set-up” in 1927 by a painting, one by James Chapin showing a black boxer sitting in his corner battered and acquiescent while his white manager, wearing an inscrutable smile, gestures to someone in the crowd. And so The Set-up is the only film noir based on a poem that’s based on a painting.
The theme of fatalism is baked into the title. Wise explores the noir existential crisis: the fix is in, buddy. Either way you’re gonna lose. You just get to choose how you’re gonna loose.
Playing against type, Robert Ryan (who’d been the undefeated boxing champ all four years at his Ivy League college) is a washed up…
Stoker Thompson is 35 years old, "too old", he's told, to be a boxer, but he knows — just knows — he's but one punch away from glory. What he doesn't know is that his manager has taken money from a mobster for Stoker to throw the fight; the manager doesn't tell this to Stoker, sure as he is his fighter doesn't stand a chance anyway.
The Set-Up is 73 minutes long, but plays like a short film by virtue of its straightforward premise, and it being centred around a single cinematic sequence: the extensive, integrally filmed four-round fight between Stoker and 'Little Boy'. The match isn't the best choreographed one in film history or anything, but it's dynamic, engaging,…
"The Set-Up is a 1949 film noir directed by Robert Wise. As Robert Wise had rather an advantageous, longstanding career of directing film, "The Set-Up" is something of an early noir in his directing filmography after he about a handful of titles to his name. Wise rather did a multitude of efforts, including editing as his mainstay before directing. He advantageously won two Academy Awards for Best Director with "West Side Story" (1961) and "The Sound of Music" (1965) but multiple nominations in varied roles and capacities on top of that. The reasoning that I somewhat want to gather together a little background on Wise before going further into the film is the factors that aptitude to be in varied…
'we both won tonight.'
driven by rage at a plot to profit off of his perceived declining talent, a man pulls the ghost of his former self out of the air and fights for his life, his dignity and his sanity. in an underworld where promoters and fixers wear suits and ties to match their white collar counterparts on wall street, men live and die for money from each others fists. an absolutely savage film of raw intensity, lit like a sparse, bleak backdrop of hell. major. nobody shot films like RKO.
"Well, that's the way it is. You're a fighter, you gotta fight" -STOKER
I liked this Film.i think this is one of the best Film about boxing ever made, both because of its storyline, and because of the exquisitely choreographed fight sequences.Robert Ryan and his opponent had actual boxing experience, and it certainly showed here,this is brutal.
Robert Ryan Best Performances, Great Film!