Kansas City Confidential

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Phil Karlson

Starring: John Payne, Preston Foster, Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand, Jack Elam, Coleen Gray

From: United Artists

Here is an older movie from me; it's been awhile since I've seen one of this vintage or older. I'll have to thank TCM for that. My review of this noir is below, via Letterboxd: 

It has been more than a month since I had watched a motion picture this old so when I noticed that this famous noir would be on TCM late last night, I knew this was the right thing to see at the right time.

In this tale (mostly set in Mexico; I don't know if the Kansas City in the title is Missouri or Kansas; it doesn't matter either way), an ex-con is framed so he is accused of participating in a bank robbery, and he goes to Mexico to track down those that set him up. It's not a complex plot, at least for the viewer. Yet, while it doesn't always have all the typical tropes of a noir, it still has enough touches and style to clearly be part of that subgenre. It's intense and has hard-hitting violence, a lady who isn't necessarily a femme fatale but still is a love interest type (nicely played by Coleen Gray, who passed away only a few months ago), hard-boiled dialogue and has the common plot device of someone being framed. The cops being abusive to a suspect and/or an innocent person, I'd like to say that this is a real life thing which stopped during the time that the classic film noirs were made, but well... we sadly know the truth.

Anyhow, I realize that others here and elsewhere have noted this, but this certainly seems to be one of the many inspirations for Tarantino when it comes to Reservoir Dogs and well, I'll go with that. It probably inspired some other heist films also, but between the bank robbery & the participants being random and not knowing each other (if only Quentin would have had the characters wear wacky masks during the robbery) and I can understand the comparison.

The movie is nicely acted by the performers. John Payne and Ms. Gray were in other noir films, Preston Foster was a B actor veteran, and the three random criminals put together by “Mr. Big” to pull off the robbery (John Payne certainly wanted to be the one to be with them... so he could take them down) all became famous later: Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand. All of them are good in their own ways.

This is not the most hard-hitting or brutal or intense film noir. Yet, this is still a solid entry and the soon to be famous cast is one reason to track it down, which is easy to do as it is public domain.