KnotMissPriceless
Why so much hype?
Kidskycom
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
zardoz-13
"Dillinger" director Max Nosseck's "The Hoodlum" qualifies as a good, gritty, heist caper with a crime doesn't pay theme. The hero—or perhaps I should write-anti-hero is a career criminal who has spent more time behind bars than in front of them. Lawrence Tierney plays Vincent Lubeck, and Lubeck ranks as a first-class louse. He started stealing early in life and couldn't shake the habit. He steals his own brother's girlfriend and takes advantage of his relationship with a female bank employee to orchestrate a complicated heist. The heist itself generate suspense. "The Hoodlum" amounts not only to a character study about an unrepentant protagonist doomed to die, but it also deals with a heist involving an armored car robbery. Nosseck creates palatable suspense in several scenes, especially during the roadblock of the funeral procession and later when Vincent swipes a police cruiser right out from under the police. This is a compact, tightly made bit of film noir in the sense that the protagonist is a product of a flawed justice system that endeavors to rehabilitate an individual. Despite its low-budget, "The Hoodlum" succeeds brilliantly because Tierney delivers a pugnacious performance. The armored car robbery that our protagonist and several henchmen carry out turns into a spectacular shoot-out. Lean and mean at 62 minutes, "The Hoodlum" never wears out its welcome.
kidboots
Vince is a career criminal who has been getting into trouble since he was a child. As played by granite faced Tierney, he is completely believable - he is a complete creep.When the film opens he has served 5 years when his mother pleads for his release so he can mend his ways - something he has no intention of doing. He resents having to work with his brother Joey, (real life brother Edward) earning an honest wage as a mechanic. He starts to gather some cronies around him and to plan an armoured car robbery.Joey's girl Maria thinks people should give him a chance. Unfortunately for Maria, she is raped by Vincent, finds she is pregnant and then kills herself when he refuses to marry her. Then he tries to make out that it is Joey's fault. The robbery goes ahead but the thieves fall out as Vince wants the major portion of money for himself.It is a very gritty, unrelenting drama especially as a showcase for Tierney. Only Lisa Golm, as the mother didn't ring true. I can't imagine a tough police board listening to a mother's pleas and releasing a criminal that obviously can't be rehabilitated.
BILLYBOY-10
Tierney plays a total jerk (Vince) who just got out of prison cause his classic little-old-lady-dressed-in-black-widow-mother goes to the parole board and pours out sob story slop until they agree to release him. Once he gets home he proceeds to destroy everyone and everything including his brother's girl friend, Rose who he seduces then dumps after after knocking her up, so she commits suicide. When the brother can't figure out why she offed herself, Vince, between bites at dinner, offers that she was "nuts".Vince is really not a very nice guy at all.Then he plans a bank robbery and when that gets botched he's all over the place trying to escape. There is a funny part of the film, where the gang who robbed the bank with him are fleeing in a funeral procession and during the procession we are shown headlines in the newspaper about the robbery. Evidently the local paper got out an edition around five to ten minutes after the robbery took place and during the get-away. The press back then was really cracker-jack fast. Finally there's a scenery chewing confrontation with his mother that's Hollywood schmaltz at its best. Mom is in bed and gives Vince a tongue lashing at last telling him he's rotten, and then she croaks (apparently of excessive Tongue Lashitis). Enter the brother who force drives Vince, symbolically, to the city dump (they used to live near the dump and it stunk). The police arrive and Vince gets plugged. The End.Some classify this cinematic goop as noir which I guess it might be; it's black and white, its dark, it has shadows and bad guys but noir being very subjective, I'd just call it a grade Z pot boiler with crappy acting, a hilarious script and a predictable ending... but its engrossing and impossible not to watch because of Vince. Go for it. Its only an hour long but sure does tear up the scenery and make for a hoot of a viewing.
FilmFlaneur
The Hoodlum (1951)In this sequel to Nosseck's remarkable Dillinger (1945), real life tough guy Lawrence Tierney reprises his role of a scowling, unredeemable thug (he also appeared in the same director's equally hardboiled Kill or Be Killed (1950). The result is another tight and tough little film, if not quite on the same level. The main reason for this is a plot that's less convincing than Yordan's was back in 1945 when the real Dillinger's famously dramatic life provided excellent inspiration. Yordan, who went on to script such projects as El Cid, was plainly more of an artist than Neumann and Tanchuk, providing the story here. Events are more predictable – the anti-hero is even provided with a sentimental death bed scene to weep his belated crocodile tears. Fortunately Tierney plays this final pay off with little sentimentality, even hiding his face rather than letting the audience see him ‘weaken'. As Lubeck, the hoodlum just out from jail finding life too dull working in his brother's pump station, Tierney is once again excellent, up to and including the inevitable denouement. His determined unrepentance creates a thrusting charisma which both Rosa (his brother's girl, whom he briefly seduces, impregnates and discards), the bank manager's secretary and the audience find hard to ignore. As an actor Tierney can manage a cruel arrogance even when working a petrol pump, while Lubeck's cynical disassocation from his family makes him seem a very modern.Interestingly, almost half the running time of the film has elapsed before he commits his first crime, or even fires a shot. For the rest of the time the hoodlum is brooding, contemplating the raw deal he has been handed, feeling as imprisoned by his humdrum job as no doubt millions of others did (and do) at the time. The difference is that he wants to reach for his big break in dramatic and violent fashion as he has it `all figured out now'. Its the heist he has planned, with the desperate aftermath, occupies the remainder of the film.Ironically it is Lubeck's mother whose tears soften the heat of his parole board, thereby releasing her vicious son back into circulation. By the end, along with society, she inevitably regrets this decision, but her role in obtaining his release means that, in some respect at least, she is responsible for the anti-social acts he performs. In this light her final scene can be seen as much an act of necessary repentence as it is her reconciliation with reality.The Hoodlum also boasts a minor first in that Tierney's real life brother Edward appears on screen for the first time, playing Vince's nice-but-dull brother. Despite all his good intentions, he ends up holding a gun on his sibling before literally driving him to his death - an event the significance of which frames the main action of the film in flashback, a typical noir conceit. Edward has little of Lawrence's screen presence, although here the novelty of the casting (which recalls the on-screen partnership of the Mitchum brothers in the cult film Thunder Road (1958 )) makes up for some his gaucheness.Nosseck's muscular, ever hard to see films are overdue for reassessment. His three with Tierney are generally excellent, although hampered by constraints of budget and length. Also recommended is his British black out thriller The Brighton Strangler, more atmospheric than one might expect, and directed in the same vintage year as Dillinger.
