Category Archives: Crime film

MIFF 2013 progress report #2: Death for Sale and Grigris

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

death-for-saleMy second Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) progress report looks at Death for Sale, which played as part of MIFF’s ‘New Arabic Cinema’ section, and the French/Chadian gangster movie, Grigris.

First up, Death For Sale. I loved everything about this Arabic take on the classic heist movie.

The setting is the working class port town of Tetouan, at the northern edge of Morocco. The film opens with two men, Malik and Soufiane, waiting outside a prison for the release of their friend, Allal, who has been inside for several years on drug trafficking charges.

Each of three men is dealing with their own issues. Malik lives with his sister, mother and a stepfather who he hates. He’s also got a major crush on Dounia, a femme fatale-type hostess at the town’s sole upmarket nightclub. Soufiane is a poor orphan who lives in the dormitory of a home for boys. Allal lives with his alcoholic father and positively seethes with unrealised criminal ambition.

Life is tough in Tetouan and every one does whatever they can to get by. The three men bag snatch when they can, Malik’s sister steals from the garment factory she works in, and Dounia whores herself. Life looks like it will go on, a slow burn of frustration and petty crime, until a police crackdown results in a large chunk of Tetouan’s underworld, including Dounia, being imprisoned.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Africa, Crime film, Melbourne International Film Festival

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MIFF 2013 progress report #1: Manila in the Claws of Light & Monsoon Shootout

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

ManilaA couple of weeks ago I posted on the films I was planning to check out as part of the Melbourne International Festival. Yesterday I ticked off my first two choices, the Indian noir Monsoon Shootout and Manila in the Claws of Light.

First up, Manila in the Claws of Light (or as it is otherwise known as, The Nail of Brightness). This 1975 film is considered one of the classics of Philippines cinema. I’d heard a lot about and I wasn’t disappointed.

Julio (Bembol Rocco) is a young man who leaves his idyllic life in a small rural fishing town and travels to Manila to find his childhood sweetheart, Ligaya (Hilda Koronel), who has been trafficked into the city’s sex trade. Finding himself flat broke after he is mugged, he has no choice but to take a job working on a high-rise construction site.

The conditions are brutal, he sleeps in a wooden shack next to the half finished building, and workplace deaths are common. He also has to deal with the foreman, who regularly rips the workers off for a portion of their wages and sacks anyone who complains.

He eventually loses that job and ends up homeless on Manila’s streets, where he skirmishes with criminal gangs and meets a male prostitute who tries to induct him into the world of sex work.… Read more

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Posted in Asian noir, Crime fiction and film from India, Crime fiction and film from the Philippines, Crime film, Melbourne International Film Festival, Neo Noir

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In a Lonely Place

Posted on July 1, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 7 Comments

In a Lonely placeOne of my favourite classic film noirs, without doubt, is Nicholas Ray’s 1950 masterpiece In A Lonely Place.

It’s a taunt, claustrophobic film that works on a very emotional level for me, much more so than most classic noirs I can think of, a devastating story about the artistic process of writing and one of the few period noirs that casts a critical eye on male violence. No matter how many times I’ve seen it, I always end up with a knot in my stomach from on-screen tension.

Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is a cynical screenwriter on the verge of being washed up. He also has a very violent streak to his personality that’s obviously got him into trouble many times. His agent gives him a chance for a comeback, a gig adapting a novel into a screenplay for a director well known for his popular mainstream fare. Exactly the type of film Dix hates.

His self-sabotaging distain for the job is evident when he discovers the hatcheck girl at the nightclub he’s spent the evening in has read the book he’s been asked to adapt. He invites her back to his apartment for her take about the tome. His worst suspicions about the job confirmed, he sends the girls on her way with taxi fare and goes to bed.… Read more

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Posted in Book Reviews, Crime film, Film Noir, Gloria Grahame, Humphrey Bogart, Noir fiction

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Hell Drivers

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

Hell Drivers poster01When we think classic noir cinema, we usually think of America. But in the forties, fifties and sixties, Britain produced its share of great noirs.

The British noirs I’ve seen are dark, brutal affairs, perhaps even more uncompromising than their American counterparts because of their depiction of the UK’s all pervasive and claustrophobic class system. Films like Brighton Rock (1949), The Third Man (1949), Basil Dreaden’s heist film, The League of Gentlemen and John Guillermin’s Never Let Go (which both came out in 1960) and the terrific Joseph Losey movie starring Dirk Bogarde, The Servant (1963).

But without doubt one of the best and toughest of the crop of post-war British noirs was Cy Endfield’s 1957 film, Hell Drivers. From the very beginning, the view from the cabin of a truck being driven at dangerously high speed, The Hell Drivers brims with pent up fury.

The plot of Hell Drivers is fairly simple. Tom (Stanley Baker) plays a young working class man fresh out of jail following a botched heist that crippled his brother (David McCallum) and left him with a huge burden of guilt. He takes a job at Hawlett Trucking Company. The work involves him driving a ten tonne truck to a gravel pit, loading gravel, and transporting it to a new construction site, as quickly and as many times a day as they can.… Read more

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Posted in British crime cinema, Crime film, Joseph Losey, Richard Burton, Stanley Baker

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The Silent Partner

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 9 Comments

the-silent-partner

Earlier this year I did a series of posts on my love of heist films, what my favourite ones are, and how they differ from caper films.

The number one rule of a solid heist film is the heist always, always goes wrong, whereas caper films put more emphasis on comedy and the criminals often get away with it.

What to make, then, of the 1978 Canadian film, The Silent Partner?

I’d heard about this film around the traps, never prioritised viewing it because of the star, Elliot Gould, an actor I’ve never much cared for, and what I perceived to be its caper feel.

Wow, was I wrong.

Gould plays Miles Cullen, a teller in a small bank in a large Toronto shopping mall. He’s a boring nobody who secretly lusts after another teller, Julie (played by Susannah York), and whose only passion is collecting tropical fish.

That all changes the day he learns the bank is about to be robbed after finding a discarded note on one the bank’s counters. He quickly deduces that the culprit is a guy in a Santa suit whose working the crowd outside the bank and whose ‘give to charity sign’ is done in the same hand writing as the discarded note.

But instead of telling his boss or going to the cops Miles devises a plan to keep most of the cash from his transactions, thus ensuring that when Santa robs the bank he’ll get far less money.… Read more

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Posted in Crime film, Heist films

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