Rent Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Cracking Film Noir - Kansas City Confidential review by RM

If you are a fan of film noir then this is a must see film, if not this will make you a fan. Kansas City Confidential is a typical hard boiled gangster thriller of the early 50's period. An ex-detective (Preston Foster) plots an armoured car heist and an ex-con (Robert Payne) going straight is put in the frame. When released for lack of evidence he goes after the gang. The three heavies are the nastiest bunch ever to be put together on the screen. Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand and Jack Elam. Quite violent at times but very watchable.

Double, Triple, Quadruple Cross - Kansas City Confidential review by Count Otto Black

Although it's sometimes listed among the greatest masterpieces of the film noir genre, I'd call this an almost-classic let down by some major flaws. The noir elements are perfect. Framed by the nastiest gang of criminal degenerates you could ever wish to see, the worst of whom is played by a very young Lee Van Cleef, then brutally beaten by a sadistic, moronic cop whose idea of an "investigation" is to hit people until they confess, our hero sets out to clear his name by catching the real culprits. And although the on-screen violence is fairly low-key and almost bloodless because it's 1952, what we do see is surprisingly vicious. These are tough guys living in a tough world, and most of them are horrible.

What lets it down is a bloated, overlong second half set in a pleasant holiday resort run by annoying Mexicans who are meant to be funny, where the surviving noir characters from the first half uneasily hang about trying to behave themselves whenever there's anybody watching as if they suspect they may have strayed into the wrong genre. I got the distinct impression that the first draft of the script was for a tightly plotted B-movie which was expanded to main feature length by padding this bit considerably. There's also an awkward romance involving a young lady who definitely belongs in a different genre, and has no chemistry with John Payne, who for a leading man has extraordinarily little charisma (not to mention a distracting resemblance to Tony Hancock).

Another serious failing is the way the identity of the crooked ex-cop who organizes the robbery is unknown to the other characters because they've never seen him without a mask, yet the viewers know what he looks like right from the start. So the very long section of the movie in which he pretends to be totally respectable, and therefore doesn't do anything interesting, seems to have been written as a whodunit leading up to a surprise last-minute revelation of who "Mr. Big" really is, from which the element of mystery was inexplicably removed. Overall this is half a superb film tacked onto half an OK one. It's not bad, but it's nowhere near as good as some critics will tell you.

Heist Noir. - Kansas City Confidential review by Steve

Cult heist-noir which re-entered public consciousness 40 years later when mentioned as an influence on Reservoir Dogs. The title suggests the kind of docu-noir which was going out of vogue by '52, but actually it's a tough, twisty crime thriller which reflects the postwar relaxation of censorship; the suggestion of police brutality is unexpectedly candid.

The usual first two acts of the heist film- the plan and the operation- are over in 15 minutes. This is all about the disintegration. A discredited former police chief (Preston Foster) brings together a gang of degenerate hoodlums to hold up an armoured car. Under masks- worn so they cannot identify each other- they agree to divide the swag when the heat is off.

Most of the action takes place in a Mexican tourist resort for the big payoff. John Payne plays an innocent party snagged up in the enterprise... and gradually the story gets less interesting, especially his romance with Coleen Gray. He hasn't the star quality to spice up the longueurs. But there's an incredible support cast as the crooks: Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand!

The script says Payne wins the confrontation, but they dominate the screen. The primary noir theme of greed is dominant, and Payne- the ex-marine who loses out in the postwar settlement- is a genre archetype, yet this doesn't have the pessimism of the '40s classics. It's a cute caper with an effective climax, but the slender intrigue is overextended.