help me find an old crime movie
polycounter lvl 19
I saw a movie on AMC about 5 or 6 years ago... I thought it was called "Concrete Jungle" but it seems like I was mistaken.
Here's what I remember, basically these guys get brought together to pull of a heist, the main character is the muscle. He grew up on a farm and he wants to start his life over and move back to the country but he needs to do this last job for the cash. Fast forward to the end, the heist goes bad and the main character gets shot in the gut, they lay low for a while then split up for some reason and the gut shot (anti)hero is trying to drive to the country with his girl but he's doing bad and I think he dies along the way and the rest of the gang get caught as well.
I guess it's considered noir, it's fairly gritty and has an unhappy ending.... while we're on the subject please recommend some good noir movies as well, Sin City got me all jazzed up for that genre.
Here's what I remember, basically these guys get brought together to pull of a heist, the main character is the muscle. He grew up on a farm and he wants to start his life over and move back to the country but he needs to do this last job for the cash. Fast forward to the end, the heist goes bad and the main character gets shot in the gut, they lay low for a while then split up for some reason and the gut shot (anti)hero is trying to drive to the country with his girl but he's doing bad and I think he dies along the way and the rest of the gang get caught as well.
I guess it's considered noir, it's fairly gritty and has an unhappy ending.... while we're on the subject please recommend some good noir movies as well, Sin City got me all jazzed up for that genre.
Replies
Good Film Noir is always from the 40s, so anything like "High Sierra" or "Dark Passage" with Bogart is good. If you have AMC you may also have TCM, which is the temple for such stuff. They have a regular thing called "Darkness After Dawn", where they show noir and crime stuff in the morning.
I also can recommend some 70s stuff, like "Point Blank" with Lee Marvin. It was remade as "Payback", but the original is a Boorman crime flick that is assuredly not funny.
And if you're a youngun, or simply unschooled, you must experience Polanski's "Chinatown". It's got style and grace, and doesn't hit you hard across the mouth like Sin City, but you'll still end up with a pummeled feeling in the gut, and maybe a tear in your eye.
"Stuff that dreams are made of..."
/jzero
For some insane reason I haven't seen Chinatown yet, I'll have to see if blockbuster has it (probably not)
Somehow, before I clicked on the thread, I suspected that "old crime movie" was referring to the Asphalt Jungle. Wishful thinking maybe.
30's Noir -
James Cagney is mostly king in this era, and with good reason. Warners have just released a Gangsters box set with a number of his films and a couple of others including -
The Petrified Forest
Little Cesear
White Heat
Public Enemy
The Roaring 20's
Angels With Dirty Faces
The 40's Noir is dominated more by Bogart and includes such highlights as -
Casablanca
The Maltese Falcon
To have and to have not
The Big Sleep
Dark Passage
There are other great 30's/ 40's noir without cagney or bogart as the leads such as -
The Setup, Double indemnity, Out of the Past, Touch of Evil, The 3rd Man.
They are all worth it. These older films always seem like work, and maybe you do spend the first 10 minutes working a little more than you do with modern films but after that, its just amazing, the of quality of wordplay and plotting are way beyond the sad excuse for films that are released these days.
I haven't really got the time to detail why each of the examples I've listed are worth the money. Just start checking them out and you might find yourself slowly getting addicted.
Oh and that guy you were talking about is Hayden Christensen I think, he looks like he was carved our of granite, the Asphalt Jungle is one of the great ones, along with the Maltese falcon, Touch of Evil, White Heat.
The stuff that dreams are made of line comes from the MAltese falcon, White Heat is where that 'Look ma, top of the world' line comes from.
Thats part of the fun of tracking down the old ones, they are the precursors to all the hackneyed lines in todays films, its good to hear those lines when they were fresh.