It's something that I have said numerous times before but this movie once more shows that all you need for a great movie is a great story and some great actors.
But actually this movie is more than being just great. It's simply brilliant! It's an absolutely captivating, good old fashioned, movie that sucks you right in and plays around a lot with you. The movie its story is far from a predictable one and you are constantly unsure on how to feel about the characters and their actions in this movie. Basically all of them are rotten, dirty, lying ones that will do about anything for a good and juicy story.
It's actually a quite surprising movie coming from director Alexander Mackendrick, a man who was mostly notable for the British comedies he did. Everybody knows his movie "The Ladykillers", so seeing that he could also direct straight and heavy drama's so extremely well came as quite a surprise.
It's not just the story that is great but it foremost is also really the dialog in it. Every line spoken in it is so well written, which also really help to build the movie its characters and make them such powerful and memorable ones.
But credit for this should not only go to the screenplay writer Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman but of course also to the actors that are portraying them. It might very well be true that this movie features both Burt Lancaster's and Tony Curtis' best performances.
In this movie its characters are constantly fighting each other. They however don't do this with their fists or other means of violence but verbally only. The one person says one thing and other tries to overtake him, purely by talking to each other. They call each other and get themselves into all kinds of tight corners, just to get what they personally want. Everybody in this movie is being extremely egocentric and they often don't take others people's feeling into consideration. They constantly try to be one, or two or even three steps ahead of the other person. This requires some great writing and acting, in order to let it all work out well and this movie obviously has that all.
There is really nothing bad to say about this movie.
10/10
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