The movie starts off like your basically typical film-noir from that time period. It uses all of the right required ingredients and handles them very well. It's definitely one fine made and effective film-noir but then it has something extra to it as well. The movie really makes an unexpected and surprising twist, which I won't spoil but it is far from anything you would expect to see in an 1955 film-noir, let me tell you that much. I loved it because it was so unusual and surprising but some people don't seem to like it because it seems out of place and has basically nothing to do with the film-noir genre.
This is a movie that didn't got made by any of the big studios and it got shot in only a couple of weeks, with not really the most prolific or best actors involved with it. It makes it all the more impressive that this movie is basically just as good as your other average film-noir with some big name stars attached to it.
The main character of the movie comes from the detective novels by Mickey Spillane and this movie got also based on one of his books. It's a pretty good tough character that obviously really fits the genre. Not a big surprise that quite a few movie and television projects got based around the Mike Hammer character.
As is custom for the genre, the story gets quite hard to follow at times and once you start thinking about it, some of the jumps in the story just really don't make much sense. The one moment he hears a name and the next he is already at the location were that character is holding up, as if he has no problems finding anyone. Also it doesn't make too much sense that some characters get killed and how the overall movie progresses, with it's many different characters with different agendas. But this is only when you start thinking too much into the story. While watching it, it hardly ever becomes a complaint since you're basically too drawn into the movie and the events happening in it.
This movie is truly a recommendable one, if alone already for the big unexpected surprise twist it has to offer.
8/10
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