Violent Saturday

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Bill B Pleasantly unpredictable crime drama, couched within a heavy dose of melodrama. But for presumably clever crooks, their brains seem to abandon them at the end. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 05/29/24 Full Review nick s Solid noir movie with Victor Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 12/30/23 Full Review Deke P Gang planning to rob a bank. Victor MATURE, & younger LEE MARVIN. After a little while I wasn't getting that much into it. 1-15, 2023 Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Ahead of its time. Excellent. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Take one part noir-ish bank heist film featuring Lee Marvin with a bad cold and another part widescreen Technicolor over-the-top sub-Sirkian melodrama (including alcoholics, peeping toms, and nymphos), add a heaping helping of Victor Mature, stir well. Garnish with Ernest Borgnine playing Amish. The result is a bizarre cocktail that is rather intoxicating in its strangeness even as the ingredients threaten not to hold together at all. The dusty vistas of Arizona look great with their several shades of dirt and Fleischer frames the action well even if things get a bit coagulated at times. The sudden violence (of the title) comes as a surprise in the final moments. This could have after-effects. Do not drive after consuming. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Richard Fleischer's noir-ish, character-driven crime drama Violent Saturday was released in 1955 by 20th Century Fox in the fairly new CinemaScope film format. The film's assorted cast featured Victor Mature, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Margaret Hayes, Sylvia Sidney, and Virginia Leith, among others. The film tells the stories of several different people living in a small town prior to a bank robbery in which they are all involved somehow and how it affects them afterwards. The film, as a concept, is certainly more modern in style than many of its contemporaries at the time. It sounds more like the plot of a mid-90-'s post Pulp Fiction movie. The idea of following separate character threads for most of the film and eventually intertwining them was something that Hollywood films didn't do too often, especially when the eventual destination was a violent showdown of sorts. And these characters are not all good, clean, honest Americans who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They're painted as real people with real flaws. One is a bit of a kleptomaniac, another is a drunkard with a promiscuous wife, and another is a peeping tom. These aspects helped to make them slightly less two dimensional, but not to an enormous degree. The only characters with any kind of redeeming value are those of Victor Mature's and Ernest Borgnine's. Mature is painted as a family man back from the military service where he jockeyed a desk instead of fighting in the war, something which causes his son some grief on the playground. It comes down to him eventually having to wage his own war, in a way. Counter to him is Borgnine's character, an Amish man whose beliefs prevent him from committing violence, but at a cost. This dynamic between these two characters is perhaps the most interesting in the film, contained in what is certainly the most exciting portion of the film. I say that because, despite myself being a bit of a film lover who craves deeper characters in the movies that he watches with less on the surface characteristics, I found the entire first hour of the movie a bit of a drag. The characters are set up to have some sort of depth, but that depth feels hollow, or rather very "Hollywood" in execution. They doesn't feel as gritty or as realistic as they should, especially considering that these characters don't have any tremendous effect on one another. They feel more like sketches of characters with one particular trait, rather than something truly deep. So the film doesn't really get interesting until the robbery takes place, which is over an hour into the proceedings, and that's a shame. That entire section is suspenseful and entertaining. It almost feels like another movie in a way. It's also not as violent one might think. Considering the film's pulp origins (it was based on a novel by William L. Heath), Violent Saturday is probably an incorrect title. Still, there's plenty of strong visual elements to the film and an exciting third act, but underdeveloped characters hampers the film's running time. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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