RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

MartinHafer This film is a thinly veiled discussion of various rumors about various big-name actors. Many times over the years, studio heads reportedly paid to bail big stars out of legal jams. And, while you can't prove exactly what happens, people talk and say that the studios paid people off and hid the crimes of its stars. A few examples of the cases which MAY have been covered up would include: Thomas Ince's death aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht, the death of Jean Harlow's husband, the beating death of Ted Healy (recent stories say Wallace Beery was responsible) and MANY other scandals too numerous to list here. It's like "The Big Knife" is trying to expose these scandals without being too specific--otherwise the filmmakers could have either been sued or blackballed. This film is a lot grittier and cynical than other previous films that look at the dark side of Hollywood (such as "What Price Hollywood?" and "A Star is Born")--and I am pretty sure the studio execs breathed a deep sigh of relief when "The Big Knife" failed at the box office! "The Big Knife" is not exactly what you'd expect given the film's title or that it's about a killing. You'd think it was an action film, but it isn't. In fact, the film is very non-action--with almost all of the film taking place in a guy's home--and often in just one or two rooms. The only action is when folks TALK about what has already happened or when the ego-centric main character shows his guests an old boxing film he made years earlier.Jack Palance plays Charles Castle--a famous movie star who has been making a lot of movies which, in his and other people's opinions, are beneath him. He's bored with these sort of films and unhappy about the state of his life. However, his divorce and the crap that the studio forces him into are all his own doing. He cheated on his wife repeatedly and as for the studio, there comes the interesting part of the film. Apparently, years before, Castle was driving drunk and killed someone. But, the studio's 'fixers' came in and got a guy to take the blame--and allowed their money-maker, Castle, to keep on making films. So, when Castle pushes the execs for better films, their ultimate trump card is to expose Castle's guilt in killing someone! He's stuck. At times, the viewer might be inclined to feel a bit sorry for him--but throughout the film he keeps reminding the viewer that down deep, he is a jerk--as are most of the folks in this film. And, just how big an amoral jerk he might be is tested when a fixer (Wendell Corey) has to take care of one more loose end...and wants Castle's help.For the most part, this is a very good film. Palance and the rest (particularly Corey) are very good. There is one exception, however. While Everett Sloane was a wonderful actor, here he is oddly miscast. Seeing him play an agent and saying 'darling' all the time to Palance just didn't seem believable in the least. They really needed someone oilier--someone who could just drip fake charm--though he WAS very good later in the film during his big scene (at about 90 minutes into the movie). I might have enjoyed seeing someone like, perhaps, Zachary Scott in this part--as he could ooze snake-like charm. Apart from this minor problem, the film delivers--with a resounding indictment on the sleazy dark side of the film industry. It also really helps that the film ended as well as it did--the finale is impressive. Well worth seeing provided you don't mind that the action is all on the cerebral side and not in the great outdoors.

Tim Kidner Bel Air. The well-manicured area of LA where the successful actors, producers and directors in Hollywood live. So says the opening voice- over.Jack Palance, not the obvious choice for a leading man (& director Robert Aldrich's lame excuse for the film's box office failure) has never been better, nor has he had such a meaty role. His portrayal of pent-up anger and frustration is powerful yet still believable.He's the washed up star who's unravelling at the seams, wrestling with a dark secret and Rod Steiger, complete with blonde hairdo as his studio manager who is out to keep a lid on bad publicity at all costs. He will stop at nothing at getting a new contract signed.Ida Lupino is also extremely fine as Charles Castle's (Palance) wife. Their marriage is on the rocks and she pleads that Charles takes the rest that he desperately needs and to not sign. She won't go back to him otherwise. There's good support from tease Shelley Winters and as Charles' agent, Everett Sloane plus Wendell Corey as a ruthless producer.Much of the action takes place in the Castle's vast living room, nodding to the theatrics of the original play by Clifford Odets.This is a slow-burning, quite talky, intelligent character-led and well scripted study of Hollywood's mechanics - its layers of people. Not as flashy or melodramatic as some and certainly not as well known, but still directed with surety and skill. Today's viewer will have to adjust to the pace and style but that's easy and the rewards to those attuned can be high.There's enough depth to the material for a second viewing, which helps bring out the characters even more vividly.

RResende By coincidence, I saw Carnage, the new Polansky, shortly after this one. Polansky is a master of small spaces, and moving inside them, and making them part of the dramatic fabric of the film. Space as drama, as metaphor, that's one of the things that made me want to watch films seriously, one of the concepts dearer to me. Robert Aldrich is also a spatial man, a cinematic architect, who also considers and bends the space to take from it wherever he is making out of the material he is shooting. That's specially well done in Kiss me Deadly, a must-see on many levels, but also here in this smaller film. Here we have filmed theater, a one set film. The first problem is that the set is a little bit studio like, and thus is more contrived, giving Aldrich less possibilities for breaking the camera angles and camera moves. Shooting studio was norm, and had advantages, light control, etc, but the downfall proves bad for the kind of visual work that Aldrich liked to try. Well, it's a little bit like Palance's character, trapped inside his golden cage, living profitably at the expense of artistic compromise. But this film is still a worthy experience. The text helps. The inner tensions of Charles Castle, mapped into Jack Palance's own Method approach to acting. All that wrapped about the brilliant vision of Aldrich, supported by the also brilliant Laszlo, a fine cinematographer, we have such great films produced by his camera. This is a one space film, but also a one-man show. It's all about how the environment mirrors how Palance reacts to the world. In that sense this is a kind of noir, in how he only reacts to the adversities, a pawn in an odd world, where he is the odd center. But this is not noir in the wider sense, in the definition that Ted applies to it, which i embrace. Ida Lupino was a clever artist, and she knows enough to support Palance's act. She really helps. We tolerate Steiger's excesses because his character is not too much exposed, but he does go over the top.Anyway, stick to the camera, how it reacts to Palance. The characters movements, what's usually defined as mise-en-scène, is remarkable in how it is reflected always in how the camera moves. This is something that started with Hitchcock's Rope. Sidney Lumet toped this game with his Angry Men, but this is a sensible use of the camera in that respect.My opinion: 3/5, a very pleasant minor work of a very fine director.http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

vocalistbob I've tried to watch this film 3 or 4 times, but I just can't get past the fact that everything about it is just awful. I'm sure it was a courageous move by somebody to cast Jack Palance as the protagonist, but there is not one single fiber of my being that believes that he could act at all, much less act against type.Yes, I understand that Clifford Odets was a brilliant author, but it's not evident here. This odd and forced mish-mash of 50's hipster dialog seems to obfuscate any genuine meaning, which explains why none of the actors, even the good ones (Steiger, Ida Lupino, Shelly Winters, Everett Sloane) seems to know how to deliver their lines - it's as though they don't understand the meaning of what they are saying. And in the meantime, Wendell Corey and Palance stage a terrific contest to see who can be more stone-faced.The direction is amateurish and completely overwrought. The physical interaction between the characters is as stilted as the dialog.And can we discuss that hideous set? It's so busy, ugly and contrived that it adds to the robotic, disconnected quality of the characters, the dialog and the portrayals.This film seems to suck the energy right out of me. It looks like everybody took an overdose of Valium each morning when they arrived on the set. It takes a pretty lousy movie to make Rod Steiger and Shelly Winters look bad, but this one succeeds.I can see that it might have been effective as a play on or off Broadway, where intellectuals and beats could have congratulated themselves for appreciating the power of the plot and the artsy flourishes of the pseudo-hip dialog.