Sunday, April 09, 2006
GANGSTA'
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was
This is another obvious niche-pick on the part of the Best Film critics.
It is the uber-gangster film of the thirties; the font from which all others flowed.
Edward G. Robinson who patented the movie thug is here proving that the 'Peter Principle' is as true in crime as in business. He goes up and then down and then out.
The movie is a brief 79 minutes and it is packed with action; very high energy.
We see Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as an moderately suave half thug. He and Robinson smolder. There is a lot of homo-erotic energy throughout this film and manliness is its theme. Very interesting.
I liked it a lot. It is a good restoration although it seems that a few scenes have barely survived, the majority of it is in very good shape.
I liked it.
I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5 just for the Robinson performance. He is quite good.
Robinson was an interesting actor. He was not handsome. He was small in size. He had some alarming speech patterns. But he made a lot of films and was always the center of the screen when he was on.
He might be a Bruce Willis type today; without the sex appeal. But then sex appeal is so individually derived. Maybe others got it and I did not.
There was certainly a lot of sexy energy in his work in this film.
