Nonureva Really Surprised!

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

christopher-underwood Once or twice this almost slips into melodrama but a strong cast with a strong script and magical direction and cinematography keep this moving wonderfully. Described in my Blu-ray booklet as a, 'sun-kissed noir' and it is hard to argue with as the bright and sunny cinemascope visuals collide with the devilish doings of the three bad dudes in town. Filmed in copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, the industry is woven seamlessly into the story as the various inhabitants criss cross each others lives and we learn remarkably much as they interact with each other. There is a marvellous scene in a drug store which sells everything (I even noticed a rack of pulp paperbacks) where we follow one character in, another is already in there and there is a brief exchange as unnoticed one of the bank robbers enters to make a crucial phone call. There are also great shots as the train crosses the desert, skies as good as any of Ford's. I'm not especially a fan of Victor Mature but he does well here mixing home life, work life and heroism. Not by any means action and hip talk all the way but convincingly and entertainingly structured to great effect. Oh and just watch out for Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer.

jpdoherty 20th Century Fox's "Violent Saturday"(1955) is exactly the kind of movie they were so good at producing in the forties when they came up with such noir gems as "Cry Of The City", Kiss Of Death", "Where The Sidewalks Ends" etc. and all in glorious Black & White too. But here, it must be said, this 1955 production, elaborately but mistakingly filmed in Cinemascope and DeLuxe colour, never achieves the atmosphere required to maintain a credible noirish look or feel. Besides the garish colour and the totally needless use of Cinemascope its main fault as a movie is the inclusion also of little vignettes of stories concerning individuals of a small town who will become effected in some way by the arrival of three crooks with a plan to rob the local bank. Firstly there is the voyeuristic bank manager (the irritating Tommy Noonan) who has the hots for local nurse (Virginia Leith), is awestruck every time he sees her and gets his jollys from watching her undress through her window at night. There is engineer Richard Egan trying desperately to save his rickety marriage to (the awful) Maggie Hayes who is having an affair with Brad Dexter (who must have been hard up for some work) and there is library employee (the totally forgotten) Silvia Sydney pilfering from her place of work to pay off her mounting debts. These minor subplots, about totally uninteresting people (who are not particularly well written or played either) are quite mundane really and only serve as so much padding until we get to the actual robbery and its fairly exciting aftermath. Deriving from a novel By William L.Heath it was produced for the studio by Buddy Adler and was dryly directed by the estimable Richard Fleischer whose name is usually stamped on much classier efforts than this. The rambling screenplay came from Sidney Boehm and the wasted Cinemascope cinematography was by Charles G. Clarke.Three crooks (Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J.Carroll Naish) come into the town of Bradenville to rob the bank. After pulling off the heist they force hapless engineer (Victor Mature) to drive them out of town to a prearranged rendezvous at an isolated farm run by an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) his wife and young family. Tied up and blindfolded in the barn Mature manages to undo his bonds, free the family and with the crooked guard's shotgun take on the gang in a well devised and exciting shootout. The acting is just about OK! Mature turns in his usual workmanlike performance (he once famously declared "I'm no actor and I've got a scrapbook at home full of reviews to prove it"). Also reasonably good are the three baddies but Richard Egan is wasted in a nothing role and subsequently it is hard really to empathize with anyone in it who are all by and large uninteresting cardboard characters. Borgnine is about the best in it! In an unusual sympathetic role as a pacifist anti-violence Amish farmer forced to abandon his faith when a member of his family is wounded. Another plus for the film is the fine noirish score provided by the great Hugo Friedhofer. His sweeping music over the credits pointing up the multi-faceted drama that is to follow.No, not a great picture by any means but perhaps worth a look if only for the final 30 minutes.

bkoganbing 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.

bob-1070 Yes, it has some nice location work, and there's a good sequence after the robbery, at the farm. Other than that, I can't recommend this film. Its 90 minutes feel like 2-1/2 hours. There is a tremendous amount of dull soap opera which is not particularly compelling, and never pays off. The entire film feels padded, and would be more suited to a 1-hour TV anthology from the 1950s or 1960s, like the old "Kraft Suspense Theater." We waste time with a subplot about a destitute librarian. We learn some worthless information about Lee Marvin's past. We watch in utter boredom as Lee Marvin and J. Carroll Naish take forever to get off a train which, for no particular reason, is carrying the Amish family that appears later. Lee Marvin is constantly using an inhaler, and you expect this is going to pay off eventually, but it never does. The fact that Victor Mature works for Richard Egan turns out to be meaningless. And Egan's messed up personal life, which occupies a ridiculous amount of screen time, adds up to very little. Watch this one with your hand on the fast forward button...you'll need it.