Impact

[4.0
stars] [IMDb Link]

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

A commenter at IMDB has a pretty good 5-word review: "Film noir meets Frank Capra." But if you like woman-falls-for-man-with-a-secret-past plots, it's got that. If you like police procedurals, it's got that. And if you like courtroom drama, it's got that too.

And, yes, this is the second Charles Coburn movie I've seen this month. Good catch. He's very good here, as a diligent cop—although he's not particularly believable as a cop. Charles Coburn deserves a spot on the "That Guy" list. But he never played that young guy; his first movie role came in 1933, at the age of 56. And he kept working in movies and TV roles right up until he passed away in 1961, at the age of 84.

Oh, right. The movie. What's it about? Well, Brian Donlevy plays well-to-do hard-charging businessmen Walter Williams. His only soft spot is for his wife; she turns him into a moony romantic. Unfortunately, she's only in it for the money, and she plans to get it by having her illicit lover kill Walter. The murder plot doesn't hatch in the way they expect, though. Walter ends up in Larkspur, Idaho, disillusioned with life and love. But then he meets a girl…

The movie is a lot of fun, and any Bay-area Lileks would have a field day with the many scenes shot in late-1940s San Francisco, Sausalito, and Larkspur. The latter is actually in California. There's a great scene where Walter, having joined the local fire department, jumps on the back of a firetruck as it bolts out of the station and races down the street. And, channelling my inner Lileks, I found the fire station is still around.

Consumer note: with my recent reading of Mark Helprin's book about copyright fresh in my mind, I noted this on the IMDB trivia page:

The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
There are a lot of versions available at Amazon (and, I assume, elsewhere), so caveat emptor. Still, even a lousy copy is better than none. The one I got from Netflix … well, I don't remember hearing one of the IMDB quotes ("In this world, you turn the other cheek, and you get hit with a lug wrench."), and my DVD player had some difficulty with it.

Last Modified 2024-01-30 3:54 PM EDT