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Best movie of this year hands down!

Admirable film.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Though released in 1960 and therefore in my opinion too late to be considered a true film noir, "Murder, Inc." plays like one, and I can easily see this having come out about a decade earlier, when noirs were in their heyday, with little alteration.It's based on the true events that led to a crackdown on an organized crime syndicate in Chicago in the 1930s, and specifically a group of hired killers who were employed to wipe out anyone who crime bosses viewed as an adversary. It makes absolutely no effort to recreate period detail, and aside from a few antique cars, looks like it's set in the present day of 1960. Stuart Whitman plays the protagonist, a man whose desperation leads him into a life of crime but whose moral code leaves him feeling conflicted and ultimately leads to him becoming an informer. The film is probably best known today as the one that brought Peter Falk his first of two Oscar nominations for playing one of the hired killers and both friend and foe to Whitman. The film looks cheap and gritty, which serves the material well, but it also feels ragged and undercooked, and not in that enjoyable way that traditional noirs could often be. Especially toward the end, the film feels like its makers lost interest in the movie they were making and decided to abruptly wrap things up just so they could be done with it.Grade: B

I remember watching this movie on TV with my father in the mid-60s when I was about 10 years old.When Peter Falk was on the screen, my father said that when he was about my age (in the early 1930s), he used to set pins in a bowling alley in Brooklyn, and the real Abe Reles bowled there nearly every day.I recall what a mad dog that Falk portrayed and how it chilled me that my dad set pins for him.I will be on the lookout for this movie again, so I can piece it all back together again.

This doesn't pretend to be a documentary-style drama of Murder, Incorporated, the 1930s organization that accepted murder contracts, although the Introduction tells us, "ThIs Story is True. The People are Real." A good guess is that Peter Falk's character, Abe Reles, was a real historical figure, along with some ancillary characters, but I don't believe Mai Britt's character, as the innocent schlub Stewart Whitman's wife, had its genesis in anything but the writers imagination. She embodies the anima of the film, the tender-hearted part designed to appeal to the women in the audience, while the men are wringing their hands in anticipation of the next homicide. And the truth is, if you have to have a female victim in the movie, Mai Britt will do as well as anybody else. She may not be much of an actress but her beauty is practically extraterrestrial. Each of her wildly slanted blue eyes seems to look in a direction of its own choosing, like a chameleon's. She's stunning.So is Peter Falk, but in an entirely different way. He may be wearing a fedora and a suit and tie, or even evening dress, but he still looks as seedy as Lieutenant Columbo. There the resemblance ends. He's a cold-blooded merciless killer (he uses an ice pick) and he's first-rate at scanning other people for their emotions. If, for instance, a gangland lawyer like Vincent Gardenia rescues him from the cops (Simon Oakland) with a writ of habeas corpus and then, when Falk tries to shake his hand, remarks, "I wouldn't be caught dead with you," Falk knows right off the bat that Gardenia doesn't like him. But Falk is not only perceptive, he's sensitive. He's HURT when someone insults him. The problem is that he's the kind of guy who's chagrin can express itself in only one way -- violence. It's a nasty trait, and this is probably Falk's best dramatic role, not that there were that many of them.Stewart Whitman, alas, is stuck with the part of the innocent guy who agrees to do a few small favors for Falk in order to work off the money he's borrowed, but then discovers he's been swept up in some nefarious doings. You know, along the lines of Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy in "On The Waterfront." "Geeze, Charlie, I thought you was just gonna LEAN on him a little." This true story of real people turns Abe Reles into a sadistic rapist as well as a hit man, so the ending isn't inappropriate. Any sorrow one might feel at Abe Reles' passing, a spectacular exit through the window and off this mortal coil, is limited to the realization that now he won't be able to testify against Albert Anastasia and the rest of the Goombas he works for. The police are supposed to be the good guys here, but I don't know. Of the three priceless witnesses they're holding under close protection, two manage to get murdered.It can't have cost much to make this picture. There's little attempt to evoke the neighborhoods of Brooklyn in the 1930s. The hair styles are entirely modern, as if the producers didn't really care whether the audience noticed or not. Even the sets are spare and functional. When Falk shows off a palatial apartment to Mai Britt, it's risible because it resembles a set left over from a high school play about rich people.Falk is entertaining, though, and Mai Britt is Venusian, and simmering in the background is something about Murder, Inc.That's about it. The movie is strictly routine.

Those who comment that Peter Falk elevated this movie to a very interesting one are right on the money. Falk, in his first role on screen, definitely plays the most interesting character. Of course, anyone who is a deranged killer is likely to be the focus of viewers' attention. However, the actor still has to be convincing and Falk does a fine job here as "Abe Reles."He's convincing!What made this film fun for me was not only Falk, but seeing a few other faces I haven't seen in years, such as May Britt, Henry Morgan and Stuart Whitman. Having watched a few "Night Stalker" TV episodes, I was still very familiar with Simon Oakland. The above actors were all very good in here, as was the rest of the cast, except maybe David Stewart as head crime boss "Lepke." He was too bland for his role.We even get a song from a young Sarah Vaughan and a comedy routine from Morey Amsterdam!Falk is the undisputed star of the film but second-place, to me, went to Morgan, who was quietly fascinating as the cop "Turkus."Another nice thing was the DVD which gives us the original widescreen transfer of the film. There aren't many black-and-white CinemaScope pictures available for us movie fans to see, so it was pleasure to view this.