Category Archives: Neo Noir

The Yellow Sea

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

South Korea seems to be leading the pack at the moment in terms of knocking out top-notch crime movies that are not afraid to play with genres. Take for example, The Yellow Sea, released in 2010.

This 156-minute film starts off as a tightly plotted and gritty neo noir, transforming half way through into a blood soaked chase/revenge movie. Topping it off is a big dollop of social realism about the plight of Chinese of Korean decent or the Joseonjok.

The Yellow Sea begins in Yanji, a city in the Chinese region between North Korea and Russia. It’s your standard Chinese industrial town, endless rows of anonymous apartment blocks swathed in low hanging haze.

Gu-Nam is a Joseonjok taxi driver whose life is rapidly disintegrating. He’s heard nothing from his wife since she left to work in Seoul six months earlier. Gu-Nam strongly suspects he is being cuckolded and has drunken dreams about her sleeping with other men. More seriously, he’s racked up 60,000 Yuan in mah-jong gambling debts to a fearsome local gangster and people trafficker, Myun-Ga.

Myun-Ga offers to wipe the debt if Gu-Nam agrees to go to Seoul and kill a man. It’s a chance for Gu-Nam to start again. There’s also the lure of being able to search for his missing wife.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from South Korea, Crime film, Melbourne International Film Festival, Neo Noir

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WUSA

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Has anyone ever done dissolute as well as Paul Newman?

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, and the little known WUSA.

WUSA numbers among that great batch of films made in the early seventies, when the Hollywood studio system was in crisis and desperate to give anything a try. The counter-culture had worked its way into the mainstream (but was dying on the streets), the country was struggling to come to terms with its increasing violent engagement in Vietnam.

Released in 1970 and set in New Orleans, WUSA is a character study of three people, all in the wrong place at the wrong time, even if they don’t know it yet.

Joanne Woodward is Geraldine, a dishwater blond with a razor cut across one check courtesy of the abusive husband she left behind in Texas.

Anthony Perkins is Rainey, an idealistic Christian who thinks he’s been employed to do a survey to help the city’s black population, but has actually been set up by the city’s right-wing politicians to help them throw people off welfare.

Newman is Rheinhardt, a cynical alcoholic drifter. His first point of call after arriving in New Orleans is a church service on skid row being run by a fafe priest, Farley, who owes Rheinhardt a hundred dollars from a previous scam in New York. … Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, Crime film, Neo Noir, Paul Newman, Robert Stone, Stuart Rosenberg

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Bangkok Noir?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Having lived in Bangkok in the mid-nineties and visited the city many times, I can only concur with Christopher G Moore that the new anthology he has edited, Bangkok Noir, is overdue.

I’ve long lamented to anyone who’ll listen that writers do not make more of Asia as a setting for crime fiction. Thailand is no exception. Things happen there every day, fantastic and awful that you simply could not make up if you tried.

Of the many noir anthologies to hit the shelves in recent years, only one other is set in Asia, Dehli Noir. To add to the allure of Bangkok Noir, two of the 12 stories are by Thai authors, although women don’t figure at all which is a bizarre omission.

The major question I have in relation to the anthology is whether it’s actually noir.

There’s a time to get picky about the definition of ‘noir’. I reckon when someone includes the word in the title of their book and there’s every indication that book will be the first of a series, that time is now.

Moore deals with the question of what is noir in the preface to the anthology and in a post he wrote here in late March for the website International Crime Authors Reality Check.

… Read more

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Posted in Christopher G Moore, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Neo Noir

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Cop: is it the best movie ever made of a James Ellroy novel?

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

CopI’m going to go way out on a limb here, and say that in my opinion the relatively unknown movie Cop may just be the best adaptation of a James Ellroy book to hit the screen.

When I opened my recent review of the 1988 film Cop for Back Alley Noir’s Film Noir of the Week with that statement the response was interesting.

Some disagreed with the merits of my choice. Others felt the need to refer back to what the man himself, Ellroy, had said about the merits of the movies made of his books.

I did a quick search on what Ellroy has said on the subject before submitting the review. There’s a lot of contradictory quotes out there. Whether this is because he’s changed his mind a lot or he’s out for a headline, well, I’ll let you all be the judge of that.

For me, the debate raised the interesting question of what value we should give to the opinion of an artist in one area (writing), when their work is translated into another (film).

I am a huge Ellroy fan and I think Cop works as a movie precisely because the book is not a dense, labyrinthine crime epic in the vein of LA Confidential and the Black Dahlia (both of which failed, Black Dahlia much more so, in the almost Herculean task of transposing Ellroy’s words onto the screen).… Read more

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Posted in 1980s American crime films, Charles Durning, James Ellroy, James Woods, Neo Noir

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The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

The Friends of Eddie CoyleOf the crime films coming out of the United States in the early seventies, it’s hard to think of one that’s tougher and grittier than the 1973 neo-noir, The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

Set in Boston’s criminal milieu, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a no frills depiction of desperate men doing whatever they have to do to stay one step ahead of each other and the law.

And none of them is more desperate than Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle (Robert Mitchum). A 51 year-old ex-con, a gun runner and Christ knows what else in his criminal career, Coyle’s got a wife, three kids and the prospect of a three to five-year jail stretch for being caught driving a truckload of stolen whisky.

We first glimpse Coyle getting his coffee and slice of pie in an all night diner before sitting down to talk business with the young Turk, Jackie Brown (Steven Keats), from who he gets his merchandise.

The punk gives him lip and Coyle has to set him straight with the story about how he got his nickname and an extra set of knuckles on one hand, courtesy of a gun deal gone wrong.

“You can’t trace these guns, I guarantee that,” whines Brown.

“You better, or neither of us will be able to shake hands,” deadpans Coyle.… Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, Crime fiction, Crime film, George V Higgins, Heist films, Neo Noir, Peter Boyle, Robert Mitchum

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