John Woo's violent crime thriller (1992) stars Chow Yun-fat as a tough Hong Kong cop who loses his best friend and partner in a teahouse shoot-out and joins forces with a hired killer (Tony Leung) who appears to operate on both sides of the law.
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A pared-down crime thriller set mainly in Reno, this first feature by writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson is impressive for its lean and unblemished storytelling, but even more so for its performances.
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A disappointing retread of the Philip Marlowe genre (1966), with Paul Newman a bit too sassy and self-consciously virile for Chandler's knight and the plot conventions a bit too carelessly used by director Jack Smight.
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Shortly before he was driven into exile by the Hollywood blacklist, the talented and neglected John Berry made this 1951 film, the last of John Garfield, who died of a heart attack at 39 (many believe in part because of pressures related to his own blacklisting).
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I would nominate this authoritative 1962 adaptation of Ed McBain's novel The King's Ransom as Akira Kurosawa's best nonperiod picture, though Ikiru and Rhapsody in August are tough competitors.
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Actress Ida Lupino (High Sierra) enjoyed a second career as a director of B movies in the late 40s and early 50s, and this hell-for-leather noir (1953) demonstrates her facility with actors and her flawless pacing.
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Though several notches above the last Hasidic crime drama I remember (Sidney Lumet's daffy A Stranger Among Us, with Melanie Griffith as an undercover cop among New York's ultra-Orthodox), this lackluster indie proves that the flattening power of cliche can trump even the most exotic social setting.
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One of Samuel Fuller's best, a tough, sometimes nasty, but always exciting 1955 effort in 'Scope and color that unites three of his favorite topics: military comradeship, the underworld, and the Far East.
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