Nov 27, 2021
The Undercover Man (1949)
"The government doesn't want to do anything to me - they want to do things for me. Remember the Zanger deal?"
"Yeah, I remember Zanger."
"Ten percent of three million bucks."
"Ten percent of a bullet in the head."
#the Undercover man#1949#film noir#american cinema#films i done watched#joseph h. lewis#Jack Rubin#Sydney Boehm#Frank J. Wilson#glenn ford#nina foch#james whitmore#barry kelley#David Bauer#Frank Tweddell#Howard St. John#John Hamilton#Leo Penn#Joan Lazer#Esther Minciotti#Angela Clarke#Anthony Caruso#Robert Osterloh#Kay Medford#Patricia Barry#starts brilliantly strongly: noir icons Ford and Foch as husband and wife with a slew of familiar faces (including most excitingly for the#old brit tv fan a young David Bauer in one of his rare home soil performances before he left for the uk). There's a wonderfully staged hit#on a stool pigeon and some knife sharp dialogue and it's all going great.. until about half way thru when it suddenly starts to stall by#retracing some of its steps and sidelining Foch and other secondary characters bc the film doesn't know what to do with them#still there's some great stuff going on here and the first half is so energetic and so fun that it almost sells the second (more standard)