Pretty Good

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

As Good As It Gets

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I just saw this great black and white movie for the first time last night. What a powerful movie and what a great cast!!! If someone had told me that this movie was a William Wyler movie, I would not have believed him, since it is so different from his other movies. Basically set in the intake and holding room of one NYC police precinct, it presents a large and diverse cast of powerful stories about miscreants (or would be miscreants) in a one basic location. This movie received Oscar nominations for: Best Actress--Elenor Parker Best Supporting Actres--Lee Grant in her first motion picture Best Director----William Wyler and Best Writing, Screenplay--Philip Yordan & Robert Wyler Is this movie the first of it kind in bringing many characters into (basically) a single room?? Kirk Douglas was at his best, as far as his raw physical acting is concerned. It came out about the same year as Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. William Bendix also gives one of his best performances here too. Lee Grant is in the room for shoplifting a $6 purse. She is great as an "observer" of all the things going on around her as she waits to be "booked." In that way, she acts as sort of a Greek chorus to the main events. If I had seen this movie as an 8-year-old kid, I would have totally missed the wonderful magic of the movie and the way it was constructed. One of the central parts of the story has to do with illegal abortion, yet the word "abortion" is never used in the movie and probably would have been misunderstood if it had been. In 1951, probably few people even talked about.

Skillfully written and directed, as well as played by a superb ensemble of actors, DETECTIVE STORY barely opens up from the three-act play it is based on. By keeping the action cramped in a New York City precinct house, director Wyler succeeds beautifully in drawing the audience into the vice-like grip of this complex, tightly woven drama.The trouble is, the story is too much a product of its time. I never use the phrase "good for its time," because it doesn't allow for the works of genius that transcend time. But this movie is stuck in 1951, which muddles a key part of the plot: the abortionist is treated as evil, but the woman who went to him is someone we sympathize with. That's a double standard now, and it was then. It also treats religion with period awe.From that flaw, others follow. The one person who cannot forgive her is her own husband (Kirk Douglas), an Irish cop with zero tolerance for even the pettiest of crimes. He dispenses Manichaean justice-- good vs evil, no shades of gray. First-time offenders are nothing more than guys who finally got caught. He's cop, judge, and jury with everyone he arrests-- and he's punisher, too, at one point saying he wants the doctor in the electric chair and he'll throw the switch. He also has a violent temper; indeed, even after being warned by his Captain, he beats a suspect badly enough to hospitalize him. Therein lies another flaw: we're supposed to believe that a man with this uncontrollable temper never crossed the line with off-duty assault against a neighbor, a relative, anybody? He's presented as pure, except for his passion for (his own definition of) justice.The film ends with his confession, and here it is, transcribed verbatim: "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell." It's a fairly standard Christian text for the Act of Contrition. I kept waiting for him to add that he was sorry for any human being that he hurt, or offended-- a nod to the Golden Rule, if you will-- but no. His contrition is canned Christianity. Never mind what individuals you actually hurt, just address an apology to the Being who promises to hurt you if you don't. That, as must have been observed before, is the brutal opposite of the Golden Rule. It isn't morality; it's fear, and it's self-serving. Including the Act of Contrition pandered to the Catholics in the audience, but even Catholics would have appreciated him expressing heartfelt remorse toward the people he hurt.It's worth seeing, it's so well done. But the playwright, Sidney Kingsley, did not look beyond temporary mores {sic}, and the two screenwriters, Robert Wyler (the director's brother) and Philip Yordan, settled for that. Too bad.

Detective Story feels like a contemporary interpretation of one of Shakespeare's plays. Most of the action takes place in the NY Police 21st Precinct Building. Indeed the film is based on a stage play. Douglas is very convincing as McLeod, a moralising, black-or-white policeman, a lonely crusader in world of big-city, 24-hour crime. We get a snapshot of some of the characters that pass through his world. One of the engaging aspects to the film is that you wonder if and how one or more of these characters is going to interact with the main story. Bringing McLeod happiness during his crusade against corruption is his wife Mary, played by the graceful Eleanor Parker, who would later go on to play the spurned countess in The Sound of Music. This is the story of what happens to McLeod as he makes the painful discovery in a most personal way that his black-or-white approach to life and work is unsustainable.

William Wyler directed this police film, based on a stage play, that stars Kirk Douglas as detective James Macleod, a no-nonsense New York cop who is beset with all kinds of suspects on an eventful day, like a shoplifter(played by Lee Grant) and a burglar(played by Joseph Wiseman) but has his sights set on a callous abortionist named Schneider(played by George Macready) whose lawyer objects to James, and insists he has a personal reason for persecuting him, which is denied, but it turns out that his wife Mary(played by Eleanor Parker) has a dark secret she's withheld from James, with tragic consequences... William Bendix costars as a fellow detective and concerned friend. Though melodramatic, it contains powerful acting and skillful direction that make up for it.