Simply Perfect

As Good As It Gets

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

The acting in this movie is really good.

"Crime Wave" is a rock solid little crime melodrama with a cracking pace and a time honoured theme of an ex-con trying to go straight. Its characters are tough and memorable and there are some great moments for not just the leads but the other performers as well. It doesn't have a lot of action but it's just as moody as the best films of its kind and fairly brutal at times. The cast is excellent right down the line; you come to admire Steve Lacey (Gene Nelson) for attempting to get his life back in order and hate his scummy associates for drawing him right back into the crime game.Sterling Hayden is enjoyably cranky, hard-boiled detective Lt. Sims, who subscribes to the idea that "once a con, always a con", and applies it to Lacey, who is visited by thugs including "Doc" Penny (Ted de Corsia), Ben Hastings (Charles Bronson), and Gat Morgan (Nedrick Young). Soon Lacey realizes that he's going to have to go along with Penny and his plans to rob a bank as the gang threatens Lacey's wife Ellen (Phyllis Kirk).This eclectic cast also includes Jay Novello, in a standout supporting performance as slimy veterinarian Otto Hessler, who's tired of humanity and now prefers to tend to the needs of animals, as well as James Bell as Lacey's parole officer, Dub Taylor in a typically hearty turn as a jovial gas station attendant, and legendary eccentric Timothy Carey in a deliciously creepy portrayal of lowlife Johnny Haslett. Bronson is fun as swaggering punk Hastings. Keep an eye out for Hank Worden and Iris Adrian as well.Efficient direction by Andre De Toth (who'd previously worked with Bronson on the horror classic "House of Wax"), impressive hand-held camera-work and use of real L.A. locations all aid in the storytelling in this taut and stylish production.Eight out of 10.

By the mid-fifties Film-Noir was changing. Most became more Crime Movies than pure Noir. But the sensibility was still around and the style was dieing hard. In the Conservative Decade there tended to me more emphasis on Cops and Police Stations and Police procedures.But, sometimes if handled with respect the Noir genre was given its due and flavored what could have been routine into something that was more remarkable and memorable. Here we have one of the best of the late Film-Noir entries that is a low-budget Movie that is priceless.Hard Boiled with sharply defined Characters and great unconventional Cinematography, the seedy sets and night shoots are impressive. Only Riff-Raff would use a cardboard box as a lamp shade. The Film was influential in many ways. This was once neglected but is now becoming touted as a fine example of the genre.This is a violent and visual treat packaged with so many Artistic touches that it remains a worthy and welcome detour from so many forgettable and less accomplished puff pieces from a Film industry that was very inconsistent in the 1950's.

Crime Wave (1954)What a surprise. There was a drift in the 1950s from highly controlled studio to highly controlled location shooting, and then, as we see here, to a slightly looser location style that used more of the ambient qualities. It isn't quite cinema verite (or some other documentary-influenced style more common in Europe), and it may be more a product of budget than aesthetics, but it really works. It's most of all realistic.Director Andre De Toth handles all the moving elements with fast precision. The photography is, by necessity, smart and crisp, but the lighting is less dramatic (less noir, you might say) than most crime films. But again, this is a indication of where the industry was moving, on on De Toth's intentions to avoid over stylizing. Other mid 1950s crime films also show shifts from the dramatics of the noirs that define the genre, one example being another Sterling Hayden, "The Killing," directed by Kubrick two years later. The use of identifiable locations for the shoots is part of their unique draw. In Crime Wave, the L.A. streets are used in a simple, unhyped way.The story is a meat and potatoes police drama, with Hayden working the homicide squad. He's terse and experienced, and has the thugs in his sights almost from the start. This puts a lot of the focus on the bad guys, and they come off as highly believable. They do crimes to survive, without romanticizing the criminal, and with lots of little mistakes and harping back and forth. And they know they are on the run, dragging a couple of innocent people along for the terrifying ride.

Crime Wave has the makings for something quite simple as a movie. Its story is about cops and criminals and a few ordinary folks trying to get by. A few criminals (the main ones played by Ted de Corsia and a young Charles Bronson) are out of San Quentin and shoot a gas station attendant and cop. On the lam they hold up with also ex-con Steve Lacey (decent leading man Gene Nelson) with his wife, but what they don't know is that he's already been tapped by the cops, specifically Sterling Hayden's Detective Sims, who is so hard-nosed he could cut through bricks with just a stare and some tough words. It all leads up to one of those heists that just can't go right for the bad guys, but what about the good couple caught in the middle? It is fairly straightforward, and it could have been in other hands. But there's something about Andre De Toth, as director, that stands Crime Wave out as a piece of lean noir cuisine. The way it's shot is one thing, as his European influence comes through in a lot of the exteriors and his way of utilizing natural lighting and real locations, or just how he has someone like a room that looks too real like Sims' office. His camera has a distinct tone to it even when sets or usual shots in moving cars have to be done, and it cuts through the BS and keeps one riveted even as one knows what's going to happen (the last couple of minutes with Sims and the Lacey's are one of them).It also can't be stressed how awesome an actor Sterling Hayden is. In everything he just brings that "umph" that is required whether it's to a hoodlum or a psychotic or a corrupt cop, and in Crime Wave his authority as a presence (six foot five inches) and his pattern of speech play off well against the rest of the usual character actors, save maybe for Charles Bronson since he too is unique even at a young age and creepy character actor Timothy Carey as the man put on watch of Mrs. Lacey. Overall, Crime Wave is a procedural that snaps and crackles and pops for 72 minutes and allows fans of classic film noir to soak up the atmosphere and have a good time seeing the coppers close in on the crooks who, as almost always is the case, don't stand a chance.