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Pretty Good

best movie i've ever seen.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

After breaking a news-story about someone talking to the government about the mob leads to an assassination of the would-be stool pigeon, the reporter, Dan Duryea, who leaked the story is fired and goes to a small-town to a newspaper run by Gale Storm whose father had just died. He immediately takes over and soon becomes involved in a murder mystery when the daughter-in-law of wealthy paper magnate, Herbert Marshall, is murdered.We immediately find out who has carried out the dastardly deed and the link is there when the murderer turns to help from the same mobster who had killed the man Duryea had exposed.Marshall shows his usually icy veneer and one wonders what was really going on between himself and the daughter-in-law.For myself, the ending came too quickly.

When the story begins, newspaper man Mike Reese (Dan Duryea) is fired from a big city paper for unethical conduct...conduct that resulted in someone's murder by the local mob boss, Durham (Howard Da Silva). Not surprisingly, he's fired and no one will hire him.He soon finds himself in a small town and gets himself a job with a tiny, unimportant paper. However, when a rich and very important lady is murdered, he sees it as a chance to make it back to the big time papers. He champions the cause of the woman accused of the murder-- even though he probably doesn't believe in her innocence at all. However, through the course of the film something interesting happens...folks, including Durham, start pressuring Mike to drop the story. So, there must be something to all this and the fix is on...and suddenly the opportunistic and soulless guy is read to risk his life to do what is right! But he might just get himself killed in the process...and folks seem more than ready to oblige.While this film isn't strictly a traditional film noir picture in some ways, as the plot isn't at all typical of noir, but it sure is noir in spirit. There are many dark and evil characters you'd see in a noir picture and there also is the morally challenged hero. But what's most noir about this film is the camera-work...with camera angles and shadows that you'd find in any decent noir picture. This film proves that Dan Duryea was a heck of an actor. While he's normally known for playing greasy, pusillanimous jerks, here he has so much more to him and he is a great combination of grit, cynicism and, believe it or not, decency! Overall, a fantastic film that's undergone a recent revival in interest and is now seen by many as a classic. Classic? Yes, I can see that.

One might choose to ponder the social messages that this film supposedly contains---witch hunts, HUAC investigations, etc---but I'd recommend that you just sit back and enjoy a terrific, well-plotted and fast-moving film.Not to ignore any social issues that the film might have intended to address, but you're really spinning yer' wheels over very little if you spend too much time looking for them. True, the innocent black maid is framed for murder (and, indeed, Gar Moore's despicable character even utters the "N" word), but it strikes me as just another compelling element in this very intense drama (and if they wanted to make a big social point, why didn't they hire an actual black actress for the part, I wonder?)Dan Duryea was born to play the role of Mike Reese; he totally dominates the film, and brilliantly. Gale Storm is pretty and has a nice, simple charm about her, but she's totally out of her league alongside Duryea, Herbert Marshall, Howard da Sylva, and Michael O'Shea.Speaking of da Sylva's role, several other reviewers have cited his "scenery chewing"; I disagree, and strongly. DaSylva, a first-rate actor, is a model of control: suave, witty, affable...a facade which barely manages to conceal a razor-sharp hostility just beneath the surface. It's a masterful, if fairly brief, performance. Also, it's fascinating to watch "Underworld Story" and discover why the classic "Night of the Hunter" (1955) looks the way it does. Stanley Cortez's bleak, stylized cinematography adds immensely to the atmosphere of "Underworld", especially the near-expressionistic look of the streets and buildings of the town where most of the action takes place."Underworld Story" should be regarded as a stand-out example of classic, late 40-s noir.

The more I watch classic films, the more I discover what a great year 1950 was in the movie business. Here's another good film, and one many people are probably unfamiliar with. This one revolves around the newspaper business.Dan Duryea, as usual, is interesting as "Mike Reese," a bad guy-turned-good guy journalist. He is joined in the cast by Herbert Marshall, Gale Storm (one of the great names in show business and who will forever be "My Little Margie" to those of us who were around in the '50s), Howard Da Silva and Michael O'Shea. Of the above-mentioned, Da Silva was the most fascinating, as the brutal mob boss "Carl Durham." He only had a minor role, but some of his lines were outstanding and his role was memorable. Da Silva was a great actor for film noirs. This isn't really a noir, but it's close. Marshall was just fine as the newspaper owner.The film was not kind to the newspaper business, so some media-minded film critics (who probably had columns in daily papers) didn't like this film for that reason. Too bad. They should have liked it, since it had Left Wing written all over it, with several Liberal themes and favorite catch-phrases such as "witch hunts" (one of their all-time favorites).Nonetheless, it's a powerful film and well-acted.