Best movie ever!

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Like Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront", a boxer is being paid to lose. Here though its not the character who should have been a contender, it's the movie which should have been and isn't. There's no question, it's a gritty and promising noir: the locale, action and spot-on realistic looking and sounding low rent end of professional boxing. With star, Robert Ryan, and these ingredients it instead rather disappoints and unsurprisingly failed to get awards.As others have mentioned, the scenes containing the peripheral characters are very well drawn. The problem is the rather slack telling of the main story about Stoker (the boxer) and his girlfriend. There are repeated sequences of her looking over a roadbridge at passing buses while she thinks about - what? And of Robert Ryan in the ring (during the fight) repeatedly glancing at the empty seat she should have occupied. The central fight is very long but. again the ebb and flow of the fight doesn't engage the viewer. In real life, some of the most enjoyed bouts are ones where the fighter who has been knocked down several times goes on to win the fight.Robert Ryan, in reality a former Marine and boxing instructor, is too commanding and too fit looking to appear like a washed up boxer in his last chance fight. The plot has him thought of as a no-hope loser. I've watched boxing (on TV) for many decades but was disappointed by the boxing sequences here. Real boxing happens fast - sometimes only understandable in slow motion. Boxers take advantage of moments of vulnerability. If a boxer is fast he can get two or more punches - with alternate hands - in very rapid succession before the opponent can take defensive action. Here almost every sin of movie fights was committed. Boxers pausing to admire the effect of a blow before delivering a follow up. Boxers rocking backwards and forwards after being hit. In reality boxers as a matter of pride and self-interest do their best to cover up being hurt. I assume it was Director Robert Wise who imposed this stagey staged fight. Perhaps a genuine professional boxer could have more convincingly faked a fight. Not something I guess a boxing instructor in the Marines would ever do - and it shows.

This standout movie captures in just seventy-two minutes the milieu of the 'club' fighter, the kind of boxer whose entire career takes place on a 'circuit' of small, anonymous cities light years away from the Chicagos and New Yorks and 'name' venues like Madison Square Garden, and who never gets within a right cross of the Golden Gloves or a 'title' fight. This world is evoked brilliantly in Robert Wises' direction of Art Cohn's screenplay in which everyone surrounding the actual fighters is seedy in need only of names like the characters in Volpone to drive home their right to inhabit the urban jungle in which they flourish. The entire cast are beyond superb with Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter on a different level. Outstanding.

A cheap thrill is a cheap kill, at the best of times and at the worst of times. In "The Set-Up"'s seedy palooza of sweaty promoters and grinning crooks, a couple of bucks for a pack of peanuts and a ticket to a fight is like a doctorate, a winning lottery card. The distraction of a blood-soaked beating is a relief. It's an escape from the lower-class travesties of its patrons. Is a dogfight just as cruel? As audience members eat their hot dogs like murderers and heckle with the gusto of a cannibalistic Ethel Merman, anything even suggesting humanity is about as relevant as an anorexic sewer rat. At a dogfight, at least the victims are put out of their misery. In a sordid boxing match, the repeated poundings disfigure the athletes until they are no longer men. They become meat, sitting alone and limp while surrounded by a pack of rabid wolves."The Set-Up" is a seminal boxing movie, setting the path for hard-hitters like "Fat City" and "Raging Bull". Hollywood bullshit doesn't plague its airwaves; instead, the film takes place in what feels like a diamond of sleaziness, surrounded by accommodations like the Hotel Cozy and the Paradise City center — the names are paradoxes. Paradise, coziness, anything in the way of conventional elation is nonexistent. The people in this city are lying to themselves; they attend boxing matches to feel powerful in a world that renders them powerless.Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) has always been victorious in his field, but at 35, he's considered to be a boxing veteran that people respect rather than bet on. "The Set-Up" sees him headlining his final match before finding a better life with his long-suffering spouse, Julie (Audrey Totter). But plaguing the couple are separate existential crises; Stoker is having trouble figuring out what he'll do once he stops acting as a piece of meat for ravenous onlookers, and Julie doesn't know how much longer she can stand by a man that puts his body before his soul."The Set-Up" takes place in real time, beginning at 9:05 and ending at 10:17 pm. Those 72 minutes are some of the most visceral in film noir history, straining themselves with fierce fight sequences (the main event lasting over ten vivid minutes) while getting just deep enough under the skins of the characters to make a lasting impression. Though they usually distract themselves with broken promises and false smiles, "The Set-Up" finds them almost incapable of keeping up the masquerade any longer. Perhaps Stoker's characterization is marginally one-conventional — he only seems to be tortured when in the ring, when in danger — but it's extraordinary how textural the characters feel, despite how quickly we get to know them. As we watch Julie wander around the city, avoiding the realities of the fight, something as simple as the tilt of the head is voluminous. Totter fleshes her out as a severely tormented woman torn between love and responsibility; there's a feeling that she and Stoker have been together since they were teenagers. She stays with him out of obligation, out of worry that he'll be beaten so harshly that he'll live the rest of his life as a fractured vegetable.Even the audience members seem to have their own backstory: one woman, beautiful but wrinkled, screams for more bruising action — she craves to see carnage as a way of needed catharsis. A man, overweight, sweating, and devouring a sausage like it's his last meal, is the guy the girls ran away from in high school; after the fight, he probably masturbates himself to sleep, wishing he could be a Tiger Johnson, even a Stoker Thompson. Even in all his misery, he wouldn't be so lonely.The only problem with "The Set-Up" is that it's much too short. It works scrumptiously as a quick, to-the-point short subject, but it's so searing and so original that it's only human to want more.

The world of boxing attracted a kind of individual of a special breed. The sport, as it is considered, flourished around the times where it was the way for poor urban individuals to get out of their surroundings, for it offered the promise of fame and money using one's fists, not one's intellectual powers.This story takes us to one of those cities during the period after WWII where the chief means of entertainment was boxing on Wednesdays, and wrestling on Fridays. The criminal element behind the fights saw big business in the way money could be made by fixing the matches. Tiny, the manager of Stoker, an aging boxer, figures he stand to make some easy money because his pugilist's career is over. The only problem, he never tells Stoker about his plan. Danny, who is Little Boy's henchman, is told by Tiny that Stoker Thompson is through and will be defeated, a sure bet for the criminal to make money by betting on a sure thing.Stoker Thompson lives in a seedy hotel with Julie. He has seen better days, but unfortunately, this is the only thing he knows how to make a living. He goes on fighting because he figures it is the only ticket to get out of a bad streak he is having. Julie is apprehensive about tonight's fight because Stoker is facing a younger boxer, who no doubt will beat him.The atmosphere shows us the crowd that have come to the arena. Stoker will be the last to fight. We watch the reaction of the people in the audience as Stoker sits in the dressing room waiting his turn to go. Julie, who was given a ticket for the event, spends a restless night refusing to go to see Stoker taking a punishment.When the moment arrive, Stoker gets to the ring. He looks toward where Julie is supposed to be sitting, but she is nowhere to be seen. The bout will be four rounds. Tiny, the manager, and Red, the assistant, are sure Stoker will go down at any moment because his opponent is having a great night. To their horror, Stoker pulls a victory that is not expected. Stoker back in the dressing room gets an unexpected visit of Little Boy, the man who lost money and will not let Stoker Thompson go without punishment."The Set-Up" is one of the best films about boxing, bar none. This tense noirish drama, directed by Robert Wise, working with the screenplay by Art Cohn, gives a tense account of that world in a 72 minute feature that keeps us riveted to the action we are watching. It is quite a contrast for this director, whose minimalistic account creates an action packed picture that has kept its punch even after more than sixty years after it was made.One of the best things in the film is the way the fighting scenes were 'choreographed'. Mr. Wise, who started as a film editor, was influenced greatly by his association with Orson Welles. Let's not forget this man was the editor for "Citizen Kane". The camera work in this film by Milton Krasner puts the viewer inside the sports arena while the fight is going on. We watch the reactions of the crowd in vivid detail, an achievement of Mr. Wise as he involves us in the drama.Stoker Thompson was one of Robert Ryan's best roles in his film career. The actor gave an amazing performance. Audrey Totter's Julie was also one of her best appearances in movies. The minor characters are quite well drawn. Alan Baxter, George Tobias, Wallace Ford, James Edwards, Darryl Hickman, David Clarke, and the rest made valuable contributions in getting us care for these people.One of Robert Wise's best films of all times.