Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

treywillwest This is part of the fantastic series put out by Columbia Pictures of "Film Noir Classics"- '50s B-movies from the studio's vault. The B's of the '50s took far more chances than the major Hollywood pictures of the era. If the headlining film appealed to the audiences of the time's need for a reassurance that the hope manifested in the emerging suburban phantasmagoria was real and true, the B-movie that preceded it gave space to the fears aroused by memories of the war, the revelation of the Nazi's atrocities, and the specter of nuclear war. The Brothers Rico feels quite distinctive even among the edgy Bs of the era. It gives an unusually honest depiction of a family's history and travails throughout the country. The son of Italian immigrants grew up in NYC and got involved in organized crime, moved down to Florida to realize the suburban ideal, while his younger siblings head west to California to escape the family's criminal legacy. The frank depiction of Italian-American culture surely endeared the film to Martin Scorsese. A road-movie as well as a Noir, with an acute sense of location, one can easily imagine it a favorite of Wim Wenders. This would be a near-great film except for one thing. Like Nightfall, another film unearthed from Columbia's vaults, Brothers Rico has, for its time, startlingly visceral depictions of sadism and cruelty. (The only thing akin in Hollywood A-films of the era would be those directed by Anthony Mann, but Mann's work offered depictions of the suffering of the violated, not so much of the perpetuation of suffering.) Both Brothers Rico and Nightfall offer as a condolence to the audience tacked on, artificial and utterly tone-deaf happy endings. In this way, they serve the functions of both A and B pictures. Give catharsis to those fearing the darkness, but assure them that the light at the end of the tunnel is real.

sol1218 ***SPOILER ALERT*** Being the local Miami Mob's top book-keeper for some twenty years Eddie Rico, Richard Conte, decided to go legit and open up a laundry business in Bay Shore Florida.It's when things were going great for Eddie and his wife Alice, Dianne Foster, that a call came in from Miami to the Rico house from an old friend Miami Mafia under-boss Sid Kubic, Larry Gates. Kubik having his stooge Phil,Paul Dubov, do the talking for him whats Eddie to finds his kid brother Johnny, James Darren, so he can have a heart-to-heart talk with him. It seems that Johnny was the wheel-man in a Mafia sponsored hit on this hood Carmini with his older brother Gino, Paul Picerni, being the hit-man! Kubik the big hearted and understanding guy that he is now want's Eddie to track his little brother down and get johnny to leave the country before his fellow mobsters have him iced!The word has been going around in mob circles, in both Miami and New York, that Johnny facing indictment for murder is ready to turn states evidence against his boss Kubik for a lighter sentence! The reason that Kubik isn't at all interested in Eddie's other brother Gino is that, unknown to Eddie, he's already got him and is about to have his brains blown out! Eddie who should have known better then to trust Kubik goes along with his plan to find and then get Johnny who's now married, with his wife Norah (Kathryn Grant) expecting any moment, out of the country only to lead Kubik, or his hit-men, straight to him!***SPOILER***A tale of brotherly love gone astray with Eddie Rico in an effort to save his brothers in fact ends up having them murdered with him being unknowingly used, by Kubik, to track them down by their killers! It was Eddie's mom Moma Rico, Argentina Brunetti, who saw through Kubik's sinister plan and warned Eddie not to go through with it! Very effective confrontation between Moma Rico and Kubik at the end of the movie. Eddie finally seeing the light in him having set his brothers up was on his way to the D.A's office to spill the beans, with his inside knowledge of Kubik's organization, on Kubik. It's then that Kubik and his hoods showed up at Moma Rico's apartment to do a job,or hit,on Eddie. As things turned out it was Moma, who once save Kubik's life by taking a bullet meant for him, not Eddie who was the one who put Kubik's life of crime and murder to a sudden and surprising end!

bkoganbing Towards the end of the noir cycle director Phil Karlsen came up with a really good crime drama about three brothers all involved to a greater and lesser degree with organized crime. The oldest, Richard Conte, was at one time the syndicate accountant. But he's retired now, running a laundry the boys have set him up with. His biggest problem now is that he and wife Dianne Foster are trying to adopt a child.But brothers Paul Picerni and James Darren are still very much involved and at the dirty end of it. Picerni's a contract killer who just made a major hit and Darren drove the car. Darren's gotten married and disappeared and the syndicate heads are worried he'll turn state's evidence. His brother-in-law Lamont Johnson's already been to the District Attorney.Conte has faith and trusts in the big boss Larry Gates who's been close to the whole family Rico, including their mother Argentina Brunetti who took a bullet meant for Gates way back when. So when Gates tells him to find Darren, Conte takes it on face value. Of course it's all not that simple and it becomes a tragedy for The Brothers Rico all around.The Brothers Rico made in the Fifties as it was could have been an anti-Communist film. The syndicate seems to be really well organized, from Little Italy in New York, to Phoenix Arizona, to Miami, Florida, they've got Conte's movements all tracked. Karlson really builds the tension up as Conte seems to keep running into old acquaintances, but just keeps going on trust.Larry Gates who usually plays upright moral types on screen has that persona work for him as the syndicate boss who's just pulling the strings from coast to coast. His is the best performance in the film, followed closely by Harry Bellaver an amiable underboss in Phoenix who's just following orders.Kathryn Grant is in this film as Darren's bride. This year that The Brothers Rico came out, she became Mrs. Bing Crosby. She'd keep working a few more years, but after that retired to raise the Old Groaner's second family. She registers well in her role as a pregnant bride in love.The Brothers Rico is a gripping noir film, not one for the paranoid minded among us.

bmacv It's a long way from the Little Caesars, Public Enemies and Scarfaces of the earliest sound movies to the Godfathers, Goodfellas and Scarfaces Miami-style of more recent decades. Along the way, there were intermediate stages, and director Phil Karlson (99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential) tries his hand at one -- oddly enough, working from material by venerable French pulp-writer Georges Simenon. Richard Conte runs a commercial laundry and, with his new wife, is trying to adopt a child; after a tarnished youth, he's gone straight. The younger males in his family, it so happens, have not, and a syndicate kingpin sends Conte off to smoke out his youngest brother, in hiding, supposedly to save his life; the young squirt is played by 50s recording heart-throb Bobby Darrin. But Conte is just being used as bait.... The Brothers Rico introduces us to an all-American, corporate, impersonal view of organized crime, ranging from New York's Mulberry Street to palm-fanned Florida to the mobbed-up sunbelt of Phoenix -- and to a world where the terms "family" has lost all of its many meanings. Only the bottom line now counts.