Detour
Detour bears a healthy dose of all the bare essentials needed for a great, twisty noir movie. Some of these events are extremely shocking and unpredictable. I really have to handle it to the writers for not only keeping this full of events, but really relying on the personality and intelligence of the main character. On the BOTTOM side, they're also a little hokey, which tells me the movie needed a little more length to flesh out the story. But in the end it's an excellent tale of bad luck and how life really bites us in the ass. This on top of the excellent first-person narration make this a very easy movie to get behind, as well as making our protagonist easier to sympathize with than many other protagonists in the genre.
Mildred Pierce
Mildred Pierce is NOT a typical noir movie. We have yet another protagonist that's unique and easy to relate to because we see all her life-related pains before her eyes a la Jeanne Dielman, except this movie's happening over the course of a few years, which means our feelings are building up with the main characters. The movie has a lot of story to it, but instead of packing it with all the detective crime stuff you can expect in those Mr. Wong movies, we're getting a Jane Austen tale of love, loss, betrayal and everything attached to it. But one of the biggest, and most powerfully heartstring-teasing aspects is the ****ed-up family aspect. Through this, our noir story beats at our own feats of betrayal like a bombshell. I adored the characterization of this movie, and that's why I was happy to nominate it.
Touch of Evil
Saw this twice. It's a real shame that a standout for movie nerds is the opening cinematography, because the real meat of this movie is the realism of the setting and all of the characters' reactions, responses and actions as a result of the surroundings. In lieu of a thoroughly developed wife / female deuteragonist (a criticism I also gave Strangers on a Train, North By Northwest and Doctor Strage 2), we have a couple of cops doing their own thing and going against the powers that be for their own agenda. Both Heston and Welles play excellent foils, one being a temperamental man on the side of the law who will do anything for his wife, and one being the exact kind of person you can guarantee will justify any crime he commits with "the law." It's not my favorite Welles movie, as I still wish the lady had more development, but it's still an amazing movie.
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