Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

dstanwyck What a disappointment! Had never heard of this film before and apparently for good reason. Got the DVD from the library, along with Deadline at Dawn, a very good film noir, on the same disc. Had an interesting enough cast, I thought, especially Edmund O'Brien. The director, Vincent Sherman, is known for some good melodramas. But the directing in this was not perceptive. What was majorly disappointing were both O'Brien and VIrginia Mayo. They'd done very well in just the past couple of years: Mayo was surprisingly good in both The Best Years of Our Lives and White Heat as a not nice dame. But in this, it was as if she'd never made a film before, was amateurish if not downright silly. MacRae learned to belt out songs opposite Mayo and Day and was good at that but as a noir character, he was a fish out of water and even appeared to be swimming in his suit and hat. Dane Clark has done better; in this he was as lost as the rest of the mob. Viveca Lindfors always struck me as misguided; had she come to Hollywood before Bergman, she might have been an original but instead she got stuck in wannabe roles. Support was fine - Ida Moore, the hotel clerk whose name I don't know and had never seen before, and was particularly noirish, Ed Begley, Monte Blue, Sheila MacRae but the major players needed acting lessons and the story line got lost in flashback. All in all, I couldn't take my eyes off of it, it was that bad.

Michael O'Keefe Vincent Sherman directs this star-filled Film-Noir. You don't see the full development of characters; but that is part of the mystery. Bob Corey(Gordon MacRae)is recovering from several spinal surgeries in a California Veteran's Hospital. And who wouldn't want to fall in love with his nurse Julie Benson(Virginia Mayo). The wounded veteran is released from the hospital in time to try and clear his Army buddy Steve Connolly(Edmond O'Brien)from a murder charge. Steve's earlier friends weren't exactly strangers of crime; so who does he go to get money enough for the ranch he and Corey had plans for after getting out of the Army. Steve gets tangled in a bad situation and goes into hiding. Steve and Julie play detectives and unravel a messy set of circumstances. Other players include: Dane Clark, Viveca Lindfors, Ed Begley and Sheila MacCrae. Atmospheric and very watchable.

dougdoepke No need to recap the plot. Those first few scenes in the hospital are charming, when not also spooky. The chemistry between Mayo and McRae is so infectious, I expected them to burst into song at any moment. But then there's that spectral visitation at the foot of McRae's bed. It's expertly staged, surpassing in impact anything else in the film.However, both the screenplay and the direction go downhill following this promising start. It's a complicated narrative whose alternating threads between flashback and real time are clumsily woven. At the same time, focal shifts between McRae and O'Brien further dislocate the viewer, (and why is Dane Clark given top billing with such limited screen time ).At the same time, director Sherman doesn't appear to have a feel for the material, filming in flat impersonal style despite noirish touches from cinematographer Guthrie. Good thing that fine actor Eddie O'Brien is on hand to carry the acting department. McRae is handsome and likable, but without the needed gravitas of crime drama, while the ravishing Lindfors's best scene is as the apparition.I like reviewer Brocksilvey's comments on the male-bonding aspects that I overlooked. In my experience, it's a very real part of military life and need have nothing to do with same sex attraction. Rather it has to do, I think, with the sharing of grueling experiences and the bonds thereby established, ones which can go deeper than more conventional types. Happily, the movie suggests the very sort of bonding Brocksilvey expresses.Anyway, in my view, the movie's a passable crime drama, but nothing more.

bmacv The dislocation felt by returning servicemen was one of the chief topical themes of the film noir cycle. After being primed to take risks but no prisoners in the anarchic and violent theaters of World War, many found it hard to ratchet back down upon their return to an often jarringly altered society. Amnesia was the primary noir metaphor -- having to reconstruct an entire past life from scratch. Others faced having to cope with disabilities; still others, having spent the "best years of their lives" in hellholes abroad, weren't about to wait for the high life on the installment plan.Backfire forgoes amnesia for the latter two categories. Gordon MacRae recuperates from spinal-cord injuries in a veterans' hospital until he can get out and buy a ranch with army buddy Edmond O'Brien, who abruptly vanishes. Upon release, MacRae sets out to track him down through the labyrinthine underbelly of postwar Los Angeles. It looks like O'Brien got mixed up with heavy gamblers, and is in fact wanted for apparently murdering a syndicate kingpin. MacRae is aided in his quest by his nurse (Virginia Mayo, good as a good gal for once) but thrown off the trail by a mysterious foreigner (Viveca Lindfors, as a discount-chain Ingrid Bergman). But, as always in the noir scheme, things are rarely what they at first seem....No masterpiece, Backfire nevertheless keeps up the pace and the suspense, drawing (like Somewhere in the Night) on themes and formats that were central concerns of the cycle.