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Year: 1948 Rating: ***1/2
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In Robert Siodmak's multi-tier film noir THE KILLERS, city-dwelling crime boss Albert Dekker recognizes former crooked colleague Burt Lancaster working in a rural, woodsy-located gas station, pulling the handsome femme-fatale-smitten anti-hero back into danger throughout a series of expository flashbacks...
Exactly what ignites Jacques Tourneur's tour-de-force crime-melodrama OUT OF THE PAST, only it's towering goon Paul Valentine who finds Robert Mitchum, who is — unlike Lancaster — very much alive throughout...
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Virginia Huston and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST
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As we learn about his current situation using the token noir device of monotone narration, but with a twist: on the way to one of several expensive villas owned by gambling gangster Kirk Douglas, Mitchum tells local good girl/girlfriend Virginia Huston everything about the bad girl who forced him into this dizzily complicated predicament, harboring more of an ongoing theme than any kind of consistently cemented plot-line...
That there's nothing worse than a double-crossing dame: and while Jane Greer looks great with a full-lipped pout and alluring wide-eyes, her unending greed for boyfriend Douglas's money is never quite clear...
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| Rhonda Fleming and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
Low-budgeted RKO's answer to Warner Brothers' Lauren Bacall, Greer is simply too limited for the necessary born-to-possess-men/tempestuous expressions... that second-act-siren Rhonda Fleming's donning right off the bat...
Which is skipping ahead, involving Mitchum's San Fransisco-set wrong man dilemma, adding to every noir trope in the book... including the usual strong-silent-sap-who-will-do-anything-for-the-crooked-dame after falling quickly/desperately for Greer, hidden in a Mexican town from Douglas: a bitterly foiled/ripped-off heavy lacking any formidable power or palpable threat...
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| Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
Which is why Mitchum never seems in genuine danger, making OUT OF THE PAST more of a breezy location-hopping adventure than the quintessentially taut thriller it's famous for being... yet there's no end to painted corners he needs out of, and the audience is never uninvolved in what's a pulpy/page-turning cinematic experience considered "the greatest film noir ever made"...
That's really only half true since, while no other b-crimer works so hard to cover so much eclectic ground (from cascading nature-backdrops to shadow-filled city streets), Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas's antagonizing character-development is sacrificed so that Mitchum's circular-traipsing-quest is all that really matters — from the beginning, middle and end.
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| Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Paul Valentine and Mary Field in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Virginia Huston and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST with Jane Greer
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| Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST with Steve Brodie
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| Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Rhonda Fleming and Robert Mitchum in OUT OF THE PAST |
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| Virginia Huston and Dickie Moore in OUT OF THE PAST |
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