People are voting emotionally.

Excellent but underrated film

As Good As It Gets

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Three men come to a small town to rob the bank and several of the local citizens get caught up in it. It sounds simple but there is a lot going on, building slowly as the robbers make their plans and the townsfolk sort out their personal lives until the robbery itself when Saturday explodes into violence affecting the citizens for good or for ill. Filmed excellently in colour and widescreen by Charles G. Clarke and directed with a sure hand by the versatile Richard Fleischer you get to know not just the physical look of a town but the darkness beneath the sunny exteriors.The acting all round from a reliable cast is very good. Victor Mature as the reluctant hero, Richard Egan as the unhappy mine owner, Tommy Noonan as the tormented bank manager, Margaret Hayes as the wayward wife and a bearded Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer to name a few. The bank robbers perfectly played by Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin and J. Carrol Naish are not branded as evil but just doing a job. Lee Marvin in his sleepless scene is splendid. The veteran Sylvia Sidney has a small role as a librarian with a secret.Well worth a watch.

The town of Bradenville is in for a Violent Saturday because three men, Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J. Carrol Naish have come to town to rob their bank. McNally is the brains of the trio and for any number of reasons including the town's isolation, small police force, and the fact that the bank is open on Saturday until noon have made him determine this is the place for a stickup. He's even got a fourth guy Richey Murray staked out at an Amish farm holding the farmer Enest Borgnine and his family hostage, picked because of its isolation and the fact they have no electricity or modern communication to send up an alarm.But this is some town Bradenville, while we see the bank robbers carefully timing out their job, we also get a glimpse of Bradenville's citizenry. Quite a little Peyton Place that town is.Richard Fleischer as director managed to skilfully combine a soap opera and a crime caper film and it works. The script is very tight, not one frame of film is wasted. We get any number of interesting side stories in the 90 minute time of the film that do not detract in any way from the caper portion.Victor Mature is the nominal hero of the piece, he gets carjacked and kidnapped, but proves to be a bit more than the robbers can handle. Ernest Borgnine stands out in the cast as the Amish father who has to question the pacifist tenets of his faith to protect his home and family.A little bit of noir, a little bit of soap opera mixed very well in a good thriller of a film in Violent Saturday.

I liked it. Those '50's melodramas/dramas-they were so great. Lee Marvin is always interesting. I liked his monologue about his "skinny ex-wife, her colds, and his inhaler." By the way-my small hometown Ohio bank was open until noon on Saturday up until the mid-seventies-until ATMs, of course. They were closed on Wednesdays. So a "Violent Saturday" (when most people did their grocery shopping, made deposits, etc.) made sense then. Some of the characters were strange; the librarian, and the Tommy Noonan character for sure. The nurse is very forgiving of him. I've always liked Richard Egan and thought his last scene was well-acted. Victor Mature is not one of my favorite actors, but this is one of his better roles. If you like '50's dramas/melodramas, check it out!

Interesting movie about small town stories against the background of a bank robbery. Lots of good actors in one place.Shelley (Victor Mature) has to keep an eye on his boss Boyd (Richard Egan) for his father. Boyd's wife Emily (Margaret Hayes) is fooling around with the local golf pro. At the library, Elsie (Sylvia Sidney) is stealing from women's purses to pay her bills. And, the bank manager (Tommy Noonan) has a roving eye for Linda (Virginia Leith), a local beauty. He sneaks out at night to watch her undress.The gang from out of town is watching everything. Lee Marvin is stepping on a little boy's fingers, while Harper (Stephen McNally) and Chapman (J. Carrol Naish) are gathering intel.The robbery goes off as planned, but what they didn't know was that Shelley's son was upset that Georgie's dad won a medal at Iwo Jima, and Shelley had to stay home and keep the copper coming. Shelley gets in the middle of things and becomes the town hero.Also featuring Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer that finds being a pacifist is sometimes tough when you family is threatened.Mature may not be a great actor, but I do enjoy watching him.