Uma Rua Sem Volta

The movie is wacky at almost every stage, and yet it undeniably works - whether through sheer naivete and flagging relevance or through simple genius, Fuller creates a totally unique and mesmerizing world of vivid colour, strange emptiness and weird evocation. It's clearly meant to be set in the US yet there's not a single interior or exterior which looks like it - Carradine plays an extremely anachronistic Europop star figure, yet the music actually has an underlying longing that's quite effective; the primal device of the black and white race riots is a distillation of Fuller's eternal theme - driven by big business, taking place in isolation on a street of no return, drained of all context or passion: the very first shot of a hammer blow to the head is incredibly jolting. All the noir elements are here, and the memory of better days hangs heavily over the plot - at the end you're amazed by how well structured it is, but it's the blinkered purity that produces the most mesmerizing results. Really memorable and weird.

I have seen almost all of director Samuel Fuller's films and I know that to many he is a god. However, I have noticed that later in his career, some of his films were just too sloppy or had crazy premises that make them far from classics. While one of the other reviews is rather harsh for this film, I do agree that later in his career, Fuller seems to have lost his golden touch. I recognize none of his early genius in this bizarre and annoying film. This is certainly no "Steel Helmet" or "Pickup on South Street"! The film has a strange look to it--much of this was due to it being filmed in Lisbon. Why Lisbon?! And, for that matter, why have a lot of supporting actors that seem to really struggle with speaking English?! This doesn't look like a work of genius--just desperation to go to such efforts to get the film made. My assumption is that with advanced age and reputation for being cantankerous, this was the best opportunity he could get to direct. It's sad...and I wish he'd just retired after making "The Big Red One". Films like "White Dog" and "Street of No Return" just weren't quality products or up to his earlier standards.

The film tells the story of an idiot musical star. Keith Carradine plays this idiot. He's on top of the world but insists on canceling his concerts and throwing away his life on a woman he just met--and who insists she is "not worth it". And, frankly, other than the hot sex, it's inexplicable why he would so actively pursue this lady--she ISN'T worth it. Ultimately, the lady's very controlling boyfriend and Carradine's agent(?!?!) work together to "teach him a lesson"--severing his vocal cords and leaving him for dead.

Later, after a lengthy flashback scene, the film returns to the present day where Carradine is a homeless guy. He wakes up next to a dead cop and the police think Carradine did it. So, he's off to jail. The cops aren't subtle and spend their time screaming and hitting people. Not surprisingly, Carradine doesn't wish to stay and he rather easily escapes. There's more to it than that, but frankly at this point I was ready to call it a day.

The problem is that although the basic idea isn't horrible, the characters make very little sense, the camera angles and camera work look sloppy, the music is far from great and the film comes off as loud, garish and annoying. No one is subtle or interesting--just loud and obnoxious. And, I think that Fuller thought that to be modern and relevant, having everyone curse and scream would do the trick...it didn't. The loudness and overacting might have worked years earlier in such great Fuller films as "Shock Corridor"...but here, it's just loud and overacted. Oddly, however, despite most of the supporting actors screaming and overdoing it, the leading man is, at times, a bit of a zombie. Wow...this is bad...really, really bad.

Well this movie brings a big question to me. Why did they do it? With a director, that has been good although irregular. He seems to have done it without caring much about his movie. The actors are very bad, especially Keith Carradine, who acts like a robot, and gives no feeling to his role. They look as if they're asking themselves what they are doing here, and overplay, in a totally not realistic way. The lights, filming, and style of the film, is outdated, of course, but it's outdated in a way that makes it dull. Many movies of the eighties still look good, but this one, just looks old. It seems that Fuller wanted his movie to look modern, but in fact, he was overwhelmed by the era he was living in at the time, he didn't understood what were the times he was living, like a poor old guy, hanging to his old ideas. So his movies doesn't look either modern or timeless. Maybe the book was good, but this strange mix of French and American actors, French team and American director is a total failure.

A popular actor/musician who like many genuine rock stars can't keep it inside his trousers, crosses the wrong person and ends up with his throat slit, an injury intended to punish and ruin his career rather than kill. After refusing to name his attacker, he gets up from his hospital bed, and heads for skid row where after an indeterminate time he is framed more or less by accident for the murder of a police officer.

Escaping from custody in a unique fashion he somehow stumbles upon his assailant, who just happens to be involved in a plot to take over the city if not the world, and by a serendipitously circuitous route, justice is served. There is quite a bit more to it than that, none of it any more believable, but it shouldn't take the viewer long to realise this film was never intended to be taken seriously.

OK, I've seen a few of Sam Fuller's films now, but I'm still not sure whether he's a veritable genius or just a complete crackpot. Street of No Return does little to clarify things. As others have pointed out, it's not a particularly good film, but it is classic Fuller, in that it attempts to deal with salient social issues with bombastic acting, lurid violence, and some seriously ham-fisted dialogue. But that's why people (myself included) can't get enough of Fuller's work: it's so preposterous yet sincere you can't help but love it. After forty years of directing, Fuller obstinately sticks to his thematic and stylistic guns, for better or worse. In particular the dialogue seems incredibly anachronistic, as though everyone in the film grew up watching Fuller's own Pickup on South Street or Underworld USA. Like Kinji Fukasaku's Triple Cross (92), Street of No Return is the work of an aging maverick director who, despite a complete lack of commercial and critical success, never wavered in his artistic convictions. And for those of us who may stumble upon their work years later, it makes their films all the more endearing. The fantoma DVD release comes with a 'making of' which is really just an excuse to film the bellicose yet lovable Fuller spouting off on (what else?) race, violence, and the good old days of street journalism, and is well worth the price of rental alone.