Bad name, but a good movie. If the name doesn’t ring any bells it’s because it hasn’t been in theatres for 50 something years. I’m not quite sure how I even came on to it, but it is a good find.
The Big Combo is an old film noir from the mid 50s. It’s one of those black and white detective films that were all loosely based on the hard-boiled fiction of the 30s and 40s ala Dashiell Hammett. It’s similar to The Maltese Falcon, but not quite as famous and lacking a certain Mr. Bogart.
It’s a good film though. The story has some holes in it and the romance is pretty ridiculous, but the imagery is great. Dark hallways, lots of shadows. The detective in this case is Police Lt. Leonard Diamond who is trying to break the back of the local Mob syndicate, called The Combination, led by Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown chews the scenery for an hour and a half, foiling our good detective’s attempts at breaking the mob. Mr. Brown’s girlfriend, Susan Lowell, however provides a crack in his organization… A side plot has Mr. Brown’s assistant, Joe McClure, a former leader, trying to reclaim control of the Combination. That, of course, doesn’t end well.
A lot of older films come off poorly. Either the dialog is stale, the plot too reliant on unrealistic humanity, or the look is just terrible. Big Combo manages to sidestep that. The imagery is gorgeous. Everything is too dark to look fake. The plot is actually quite brutal. There’s no helpful neighbor showing up with a solution at the last minute. As for the dialog, it’s hard-boiled fiction. A lot of one-liners, a lot of glares, not much narration. The whole thing times out around 80 something minutes so it wraps up nice and quickly.
Considering that the theatres are showing off a handful of sequels and bland teen films this week (every week), I was happy to find something a bit more engrossing for my evening entertainment.
