CALL NORTHSIDE 777 (1948)

Two men are wrong accused of a murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison even though the only evidence was a bunch of bullshit handled by crooked cops.  Imagine that.  Eleven years later the mother of one of the men has saved up $5,000 scrubbing floors and she places an ad in the paper offering the 5 g's as a reward for any information about the real killer(s).  The editor of the paper sees the ad so he assigns reporter Jimmy Stewart to look into it.  Once he starts looking into the story it's pretty clear that the evidence doesn't line up at all.

Based on a true story CALL NORTHSIDE 777 hasn't aged too well.  In fact I'll just go ahead and say it: it's boring.  We all know right from the beginning how the story is going to end, so any suspense is thrown out the window.  The semi-documentary filming style doesn't help things at all either.  Added onto that the numerous loose ends and the lack on a concrete bad guy CN777 is pretty slow going.  Stewart's performance is fine, as is Lee J. Cobb's, but even so I can't think of any reason in the world why I would ever want to watch this film again.  If you need me I'll be in my room watching THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION.

THE RACERS (1955)

Watchable, but overall forgettable melodrama starring Kirk Douglas as a young hotshot race car driver who falls in love with a dancer. The rest of the movie is just their trials and tribulations (car wrecks, drinking, fighting, etc.). A few of the racing scenes are exciting, but for the most part they're kinda lame cause they look very fake.  I really wish I had this on DVD so I could take screenshots.

An even bigger problem was the acting by Douglas' love interest Bella Darvi. She's terrible! So terrible I couldn't believe she was an legitimate actress, so I wasn't surprised when I read that at the time she was Darryl F. Zanuck's mistress! That explains it. The supporting cast composing of Lee J. Cobb, Cesar Romero, Katy Jurado and Gilbert Roland do a great job and somewhat ease the pain caused by Darvi.

Worth a rent or a watch on cable if you're a Douglas fan, but it's not worth buying.

THIEVES' HIGHWAY (1949)

[Update 4/12/2020: I'm not a fan of this review. I can do better. Will fix eventually.]

"There was only meanness and hardness lumping like grief in his chest..." that's one of my favorite lines from A. I. Bezzerides' underrated masterpiece "Thieves' Market", the novel which this movie is based. As much as I like this movie, the novel is even better. It's darker (pretty much pitch black), more violent, there's foul language, it's gritty, brutal, nasty and most importantly Bezzerides is an amazing writer. His naturalist style here is like a mixture of Zola's "Germinal" and Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle"...two of my favorite novels.

The movie's no slouch though. The story is about Nick Garcos. He comes home from the military to find his father has two bum legs from an accident. Thing is he doesn't remember the wreck, all he remembers is trying to get the money owed him by a scumbag produce wholesaler in San Francisco by the name of Mike Figlia. Nick teams up with a truck driver Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell) to take the season's very first load of apples down to Figlia and get their money, plus the money owed to Nick's father. That's the plan anyways.

The direction by Jules Dassin is masterful. If you look at his resume between 1947 and 1955 he just made one impressive movie after another all in a row: BRUTE FORCE, THE NAKED CITY, THIEVES' HIGHWAY, NIGHT AND THE CITY and RIFIFI.  All the performances are great, but the standout to me is Lee J. Cobb. This guy is a real slimeball! As soon as he says his first words, you just want to vomit and beat the shit out of him, then he talks some more and you want to murder the fucking prick just to make the world a better place. What an asshole!

If you like realistic, bleak noirs then I think you'll enjoy THIEVES' HIGHWAY, but do yourself a favor a read the novel also.