Verdict
Summary
A smoky, near-perfect film noir with a truly vivid and despicable villain at the center, thanks to Conte’s pitch-perfect performance, The Big Combo is a seriously solid film that keeps up the tension and style from start to finish. Filmmaker Joseph H. Lewis does a crackerjack job with this pulpy material, and the film still roundly resonates today.
Plot:
A cop and a gangster play a deadly game of top dog in a smoky city.
Review:
A gangster’s moll, blonde haired beauty with a frown staining her soul named Susan (Jean Wallace), tries committing suicide when she realizes she’s trapped by her boyfriend, a smug gangster who’s climbed up from the gutter to be the top dog in the city named Mr. Brown (Richard Conte, indelible), in an abusive relationship that will never end. To her rescue is a righteous detective named Diamond (Cornel Wilde who was married to Wallace at the time), a guy who basically owns nothing but his soul. When he falls for Susan at the hospital, he realizes that she might be his way – his only way – to pin some crimes on Brown, but the further he presses into her, the more she recoils. As the police department implores Diamond to tread carefully, he stumbles into a possible murder that may have occurred some years ago that he can actually build a case around Mr. Brown: The murder of his long-disappeared first wife who vanished while on a voyage at sea, which Brown was also on. Brown, full of confidence and a willingness to kill, maim, and destroy anyone who gets in his way, realizes that Diamond is on to something, and so things get real sticky very quickly between them as they vie to “win” the deadly game they begin playing with each other.
A smoky, near-perfect film noir with a truly vivid and despicable villain at the center, thanks to Conte’s pitch-perfect performance, The Big Combo is a seriously solid film that keeps up the tension and style from start to finish. Filmmaker Joseph H. Lewis does a crackerjack job with this pulpy material, and the film still roundly resonates today.
Ignite Films brings The Big Combo to Blu-ray in a sparkling new presentation, newly restored in 4K with a slew of choice bonus features, including another feature film noir called The Crooked Way. The two-disc release comes with a slipcover, audio commentaries, and postcards, and much more.
Newly Produced Bonus Features:
New Audio Commentary with acclaimed film historian and noir expert Imogen Sara Smith.
New Interview with celebrated author and critic Philippe Garnier.
How a Man Makes a Living — How a Little Combo Made The Big Combo: New video essay by Scout Tafoya.
The Crooked Way (1949) – Another brutal noir with spectacular expressionistic cinematography by John Alton with unfiltered filming on the 1940s post-war streets of Los Angeles.
Legacy Bonus Features:
Audio Commentary with Eddie Muller, the “Czar of Noir” and founder of the Film Noir Foundation.
Geoff Andrew, respected critic and curator, on The Big Combo.
Wagon Wheel Joe: A fascinating video appreciation of Lewis’s dynamic camerawork and recurring motifs, tracing his evolution from B-movie craftsman to master stylist.
Booklet:
Art in a Boiling Pot: New written introduction by Eddie Muller.
Commissioned essays by Ben Sachs, Alonso Duralde, Katie Stebbins, Scout Tafoya, and Garrett Clayton.
