Genio del crimen

The storyline centers about a persistent cop(Cornel Wilde)who tracks down a mobster(Richard Conte) and his henchmen (Brian Donlevy,Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman). He's helped by the gangster's girlfriend and one deputy(Robert Middleton).

The movie has likeness to noir cinema of the 40s and 50s that played Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas and Glenn Ford but here is B series.

In the film there are action, raw drama ,suspense, murders and is very interesting.

Interpretation by Cornel Wilde and Jean Wallace, marriage in real life, is magnificent, the evil racketeer Richard Conte is top notch and his underlings Donlevy, Van Cleef and Holliman are of first rate.

Cinematography by John Alton is extraordinary ,setting of lights and shades depict this type of cinema and Alton and Nicholas Musuraca are the principal photographers.

David Raskin music, being recently deceased, is nice and atmospheric.

The motion picture is well directed by Joseph H. Lewis

Rating : very good, 7,5/10. The flick will appeal to noir cinema fans. Well worth watching.

A very good gangster flick and evocative film-noir directed by Joseph H. Lewis. A zealous cop(Cornel Wilde) seeks the aid of a gangster's(Richard Conte) ex-girlfriend(Jean Wallace)in bringing down a crime syndicate. Conte's character is relentless as he rules his corrupt world with murder, gunplay and torture. Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman are his minions and Brian Donlevy is a handicapped mentor of sorts. Supporting cast features Helen Walker and Robert Middleton. Terrific lighting and photography make this an exceptional crime drama where shades of gray makes THE BIG COMBO a notch above the ordinary. Note:off-screen Wilde and Wallace are Mr. & Mrs.

Now that DVD is fast becoming the medium of choice for many film enthusiasts, some lesser known, lower budget titles are finding their way to wider audiences.

Joseph Lewis's "The Big Combo" has made this trip to digital, and thankfully none of the film's captivating sleaze has been stripped away in the transfer.

What appears to be a fairly stock story of straight-arrow police detective Leonard Diamond (Cornel Wilde) obsessed with capturing a foreboding gangland chieftain, Mr. Brown, "Combo" is an unusually hardboiled, over the top tale of revenge and murder that will please and perhaps even surprise noir and crime-drama fans.

Over the course of the protracted investigation, Diamond, who has nearly lost his badge because of his stubborn determination, has fallen for the boss's dame -- a society girl gone so wrong she figures suicide is the only way out. But Mr. Brown (Richard Conte, excellent as the 'last-name only' control freak) is as omnipotent and omniscient as a head pit boss in Vegas, taunting and manipulating every one around him with an unsettling equanimity.

He tells Diamond, who is virtually powerless to do anything but temporarily hold the murderous Brown and his men on trivial charges, that "the busboys in his hotel" make more money than he does. Even Brown's right hand man, the hearing impaired McClure (Brian Donlevy)is mercilessly ridiculed for his second tier status.

And Brown is obsessed with his prowess with women as Diamond is with capturing him and wooing his moll. The film is filled with risque sexual allusions as wild as anything from director Sam Fuller.

In one scene, Brown manuevers around his girl, stopping briefly at her lips, but then dropping out of frame, seemingly down past her waist. And Diamond cavorts with a "burlesque" dancer (with a heart of gold, natch) who appears in a skimpy outfit that is titillating even by today's television standards.

But the most ribald bits to make it past the censors involve Brown's bickering henchmen, Fante and Mingo. Fante, played by the aquiline Lee Van Cleef, appears to be a typical hood, but midway through the film the lights come up in a bedroom where the two men have been sleeping in remarkably close quarters.

Later, sequestered in a mob-hideout, the two engage in thinly-veiled homoerotic banter that will leave you howling.

As will some of the other scenes -- torture by drum solo, a Casablanca inspired finale. Throughout the picture Brown and Diamond dance around one another sans gene, to the sound of gunshots and acid-tongued banter.

"The Big Combo" is taut, gutter entertainment, delivered in precise black and white. Even if you do watch it on DVD.

Cornel Wilde stars with wife Jean Wallace, Brian Donlevy, Richard Conte, Lee van Cleef, Earl Holliman, and Robert Middleton in "The Big Combo." Wilde, who was one of the producers, had the idea of turning his wife into a serious actress. She certainly was pretty. For those who may not know it, Wallace was first married to Franchot Tone, so Wilde became their children's' stepfather.

The story concerns a police detective Diamond (Wilde) who is after the head of a far-reaching mob, Mr. Brown (Conte). He's been ordered to stop investigating because he can't find any evidence and also, he is in love with Brown's girlfriend Susan (Wallace) and the department is over budget thanks to his obsession.

When Susan attempts suicide, Diamond is allowed to follow one last lead, which is the name Alicia that Susan muttered in the hospital.

Meanwhile Brown sends his thugs, Fante and Mingo (Van Cleef and Holliman) to stop Diamond. By mistake, they murder Rita, Diamond's girlfriend. Now nothing will stop Diamond until he gets his revenge.

Good noir, with Wilde in top form a a tough guy. I admit he's never been a favorite of mine - he just does not warm up the camera at all. In order to avoid the production code, the sexual scene between Diamond and Rita is cleverly managed, and there are only subtle indications that Fante and Mingo are gay lovers - less subtle once you're aware of it and watch it again.

Helen Walker plays Brown's wife, and alas, the years weren't kind to her due to her trial and bad publicity in the 1940s. Here she's in a character role. By 1968, she would be dead, at the age of 47.

Richard Conte is fantastic as Brown, cruel and mean with no redeeming qualities. He pulls it off perfectly.

Recommended - the photography throughout is excellent, but the final shot at the end is stunning.

The Big Combo may be the only film noir ever plugged on the I Love Lucy show (Cornel Wilde guest-starred in the episode which aired April 18, 1955). Coming late in the noir cycle and directed by Joseph Lewis, it seized a position as one of its most innovative and stylish titles. And, with the wizardly John Alton behind the camera, it kicks film noir's distinctive look up into another, rarefied dimension (Alton must have been emulating the Dutch Masters – spare traceries of light limn almost abstract patterns on the screen's primordial blackness).

The story, too, stays a primal one of obsession, lust and revenge. Ninety-six-fifty-a-week cop Wilde lives in a cheap flat across from a burlesque house, one of whose headliners (Helene Stanton) he occasionally `sees.' But his only passion is for nailing suave but savage crime boss Richard Conte. Iin a performance brimming with cool menace, Conte is fond of saying `First is first and second is nobody.' Wilde also harbors half-admitted fantasies of riding to the rescue of Conte's remote and unwilling mistress (Jean Wallace, Wilde's off-screen wife). Conte's so possessive that he assigns an intimate twosome of torpedoes (Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman) as her full-time bodyguards (since they're gay, he trusts them to serve as eunuchs). But when they fail to prevent her overdosing on pills, she falls into Wilde's hands at hospital and starts to babble about a woman called Alicia.

Another wild card is Conte's lieutenant Brian Donleavy, over the hill and hard of hearing, who chafes at playing second fiddle; he saw himself as heir to the organization when unseen capo Grazzi `retired' to Sicily. His grudge against his boss makes him reckless, placing the whole `combination,' or combo, in jeopardy. Wilde, meantime, has tracked down elusive Alicia, Conte's supposedly murdered wife (Helen Walker, the duplicitous psychiatrist in Nightmare Alley, in her last screen appearance); only she knows where the bodies are buried and can write her husband's death warrant....

The Big Combo counts as one of the more sadistic instalments in the cycle, but the mayhem and executions are played as big set-pieces, as flourishes; Lewis draws on Alton's full fetch of tricks (and in one memorable instance, on the sound editor's) to highlight but at the same time soften their nastiness. There's a streak of sadism in the casting, too: Both Wallace's attempted suicide and Walker's dissipation bring to mind the actresses' private troubles. Innovative and striking, The Big Combo comes as close as any film in the noir cycle to being an art-house triumph; it consolidates Lewis' reputation as an erratic director who was nonetheless capable – here, and with his Gun Crazy – of pulling off something unexpected yet extraordinary.