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Born to Kill (1947)

"Has it occurred to you, neither of us looks like a scoundrel, do we?"

The smart, cutting lead female in this crime noir, Helen, played by Claire Trevor, is enough alone to make Born to Kill rise above. She's educated and calculating, far from the gutter but not at home with mere elegance and wealth, the things she's been trying to corner. The story is hers, luckily, because she's ultimately admirable, whatever her moral milkiness.

The whole thing starts with a shock, and then with a disturbing calm where all the pieces refuse to fit together. The lead male, Sam, played by Lawrence Tierney, is a ruthless, violent man with all the elegance and brains of a half-track. He's a perfect problem for Helen, and the movie only compounds and coils around a plot that never falters, whatever its complications. The detective (Walter Slezak) is too perfect in his delicate selfishness, and good old Elisha Cook Jr. is a surprising, and also perfect, good guy with too much tolerance due to his large heart.

It isn't a surprise that a good script and some talented actors are put together with such smart, fast panache by a young Robert Wise, more famous for little tidbits like West Side Story and Sound of Music. It ends up taking some astonishing twists, and some liberties with location shooting that are fabulous for 1947.

After all is said in done we are back with Claire Trevor's performance, which is large and nuanced, and very convincing. It's a good thing she has a lot to work with. A great film. Even the third time.

Superior film noir classic directed by the late Robert Wise about Claire Trevor and her love for a killer, Lawrence Tierney. A couple is murdered by Tierney in Reno because he was jealous and easily angered to the point of violence. Trevor finds the bodies but leaves after finalizing her divorce. While on the train, she meets up with Tierney and has instant chemistry with him. Only trouble is that she has a fiancée with a lot of money and Tierney is broke. Well, just like with any film noir, it gets more complicated with Tierney marrying Trevor's foster sister(a wealthy woman in her own right) and being tailed by sleazy, literate detective Walter Slezak. Wise does a more than adequate job creating tension and suspense in this film and leaving no character's sense of good in tact. All of the characters it seems are of dubious natures with Esther Howard's roly-poly drunk with a heart of gold coming out as the most ethical! The acting by the leads and the supporting cast are first-rate. I am so surprised that Tierney, a man I immediately remembered from a Seinfeld episode and from Reservoir Dogs, was so good so long ago. He seemed to have dropped out of the public eye for so long, but his acting definitely shows great potential. I believe I read that alcoholism was behind this. At any rate, Tierney is very good, Trevor plays one of the coldest performances on screen(her lines to Howard were absolutely chilling), Slezak is vintage Slezak - an oily, good-humoured man looking out for himself, Elisha Cook Jr. gives another good turn as Tierney's buddy, and Howards excels as the drunken woman. The scenes with her and Cook were well-paced and effectively frightening. Born to Kill is nothing great in terms of plot or story - we have seen much of the same before - but under the adroit eyes of Wise and aided by big performances by talented actors and actresses - it rises above the mundane to be a vintage film noir classic. Tieney and Trevor really personified cold wickedness as well as anyone I have seen on screen.

Here is another one of those films I didn't particularly care for the first time around, but gave it a second chance some years later and was rewarded. Now I love the film and am a Lawrence Tierney fan.

Tierney's intense character, his hot temper and insane paranoid jealousy are, well, fun to watch once you get to like this actor and his tough-guy roles. Tierney, in this film, would kill over the slightest thing that would suggest to him that he might be getting double crossed. Talk about a guy with mental problems!

Trevor was effective as the immoral woman who cared for money first, and everything else a distant second. As good as she and Tierney play off each other, for me, the most entertaining parts of the film were watching three of the supporting characters, played by Elisha Cook Jr., Walter Slezak and Esther Howard.

Cook played his normal film noir jittery-worried gangster accomplice and victim. He made a living playing these type of roles. Slezak was the Shakespeare/ Bible--quoting detective and Howard was a real hoot as an old lady trying to track down the killer of her young friend.

This is film noir in all its moodiness and hard attitude. If you find it a bit slow, please give it a second chance. These characters grow on you!

.... and there's a very good reason. He was a one-trick actor, a limited guy who could only look stern or cruel. I can't remember him ever showing any heart or any desirable quality in any of his pictures. And yet you can't take your eyes off him when he's on screen, hoping for a flash of human feeling, which never comes.

Fortunately, in this picture he is surrounded by good actors giving great performances, and they pick up the slack for him. Claire Trevor carries the load here as a woman attracted to evil personified, in Tierney. Audrey Long, Walter Slezak and Elisha Cook,Jr. all shine in support.

Starting a new paragraph for Esther Howard whom I can't recall seeing before but who gives a soulful, heartbreaking performance as a drunken landlady, a performance which should have gotten at least an Oscar nomination. She wasn't just good - she was perfect.

"Born To Kill" is one of the best of the Film Noir genre and is shamefully neglected in noir seminars and festivals. I would put it right behind "Out Of The Past", which is at the top of my list.

As the saying goes - "They sure don't make 'em like this one anymore."

And, when it comes to that old, familiar saying - It couldn't possibly be any more true than it does when discussing 1947's "Born To Kill".

This vintage Hollywood crime-drama is an absolute hoot of pure old-school soap opera where the implausible situations and the unintentionally laughable dialog is so off-the-wall at times that it couldn't be anything but a riot to watch.

So - If you're in the mood to completely suspend disbelief, then, you are certain to get a kick of pure pleasure out of watching "Born To Kill".