lordrob

This is a very good film, but it could have been better. The plot, while clever, is rather predictable. (I figured out who the Third Man was as soon as the Romanian guy denied there was a third man). Also, while Welles' brief performance is probably the finest of his career, Cotten's acting is rather flat and uninspired, making his character more one-dimensional than is really necessary. The cinematography is inspired, truly some of the finest to be found anywhere, but the editing is rather choppy. The movie deserves to be on the AFI 100 list for its contribution to cinematic history, as it is really the forerunner of the entire film noir genre, but on its sheer artistic merits it does not quite rank with Fantasia, Network, The Manchurian Candidate, and a number of other films AFI placed farther down on the list. However, on the whole The Third Man is certainly worth seeing--Welles' entrance (however predictable) and the superb ferris wheel sequence can make the film worthwhile all by themselves.

I can honestly say this is the worst movie I've seen in awhile. It was marketed very deceptively, with tag lines such as "What's the last thing you know is true?", making it appear as though the film was an interesting conspiracy theory type of plot. It wasn't. It was more like a bad effort at a "chick flick." The script was canned, which left Ford and Thomas little room to effectively use their immense talent. Moreover, Ford's character was thoroughly disagreeable, which did not help to involve the audience in the plot which surrounded him. A plot which, I might add, was rather thinly spread between Ford's police work, Thomas' reelection bid, and the relationship between the principal characters, leaving all three woefully underdeveloped--particularly Ford's police case. I did not enter this film anticipating an Oscar-quality movie, but I also did not expect to leave counting all the ways in which I could have better spent $7. Give this one a miss.

Forget *Plan 9 From Outer Space*. *Fu Manchu* is far and away the worst movie ever made. Even the Mystery Science Theater crowd said it was worse than anything else they had ever seen. Why they bothered to dub it is a mystery to me, since even in a language the audience can speak the film is so hopelessly incoherent that no sane person--and few insane persons--could possibly discern what is happening throughout the bulk of the movie. I cannot help but wonder why I am even wasting my time and energy in writing a review, except to say that if you want to see a classic example of how *not* to write a screenplay, see this film, but if you have any other motive in mind, avoid it like the plague.