Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

classicsoncall The title of the picture is short and to the point, the film is appropriately crafted for viewers with a disciplined attention span who just want to get it over with. Lawrence Tierney is all menace here as Vincent Lubeck, freed on parole after a five year stretch against the better judgment of a warden and parole board who've allowed themselves to be influenced by the convincing sob story of a mother who's duty it is to stand up for her son. We'll see how this relationship turns out later, but for now, real life brother Ed Tierney rides to the rescue with a job offer at his filling station with the kind of upward mobility that comes with being located across the street from a bank. I had a sense that pumping gas wasn't Vince's forte when he doused a customer's car with a couple of gallons when he complained about the service. It would have been a worse career move had he been a smoker.Vince does his level best to convince us that he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever by chewing up and spitting out his brother's girlfriend, leading her to suicide following a rape resulting in pregnancy. As an equal opportunity womanizer, he moves in on a bank secretary (Marjorie Riordan) to firm up plans for the big heist. I always get a kick out of these era films where the crime in progress is the subject of newspaper headlines in real time, a feat that took at least another half century to realize with the advent of the internet.You can do better than "The Hoodlum" if masterful crime drama is your thing, but for pure sleaze factor, it doesn't get much better than this. Had the elder Tierney cracked a smile even once I would have been disappointed. This one is pure hard boiled and as gritty as they come, and even though it may not stand up to serious scrutiny, how bad can a film be when it winds up at the city dump.

st-shot Brevity is the only strong point in this sloppy little noir featuring Laurence Tierney and brother Ed. Contrived and rushed it makes little to no attempt to establish veracity and the whole affair has the feel and look of adults acting kids playing cops and robbers in a neighborhood alleyway.Career criminal Vincent Lubeck is up for parole and while all indications point to denial his mother comes in and sobs enough to spring him. He goes to work for his brother at his filling station but still filled with rage and self pity decides to rob the bank across the street. He gets a gang together to look conspicuous then on the day of the robbery simply puts the hose back on the pump crosses the street and gets into a fierce gun battle with armored car guards. The Hoodlum is a mishmash of bad acting and crass composition with complete inattention to detail. The robbery and getaway stumbles, bordering on comic with montages of a fully mobilized LA police force and newspaper stories hitting the streets within ten minutes of the robbery still in progress by way of a three car funeral. Tierney as usual is convincingly threatening but his ticking time bomb demeanor should make it clear to everyone to stay away from the hair brained heist. The rest of the cast more or less walks on egg shells around violent Vince. Intimidating as Tierney is he remains no match for this haphazardly constructed unintentionally comic caper that collapses atop him.

dougdoepke A particularly nasty slice of thick ear. Looks like the movie's a vehicle for Tierney's brand of deadpan tough guy. And that's the way he plays it except for a Cagney-like soft spot for his ma. Then too, Vincent's (Tierney) seduction technique is right out of Caveman 101, leaving poor sweet Rosa (Roberts) devastated and with child. No wonder his brother (the other Tierney) wishes him on a garbage heap with the other trash. Where Vincent goes, ruin is bound to follow.This is a poverty row production, to say the least. The exterior sets are pure 99-cent store, especially the bank's tacky cross street. The robbery scene, which should be the centerpiece, fails to deliver the expected tension. I know cult director Nosseck is capable of better, but was likely cramped by a shoestring budget.Actually, it's the acting that comes across best. I particularly like Riordan's savvy, sexy Eileen. As Vincent's foil she's tough enough to be convincing. Older actress Golm also manages well the difficult role of the long-suffering mother.Is the movie noir. In my book, it is only in the loosest sense. The movie's more gangster than noir, especially when the lighting looks more cheap than artistic. Plus, there's nothing ambiguous about Vincent's life of crime. The narrative is more like an emotional buildup to the day of reckoning than it is about shades of gray. I just wish tough guy Tierney could have stayed sober and out of trouble long enough to have the career his talent merited, which is the main reason to catch this otherwise forgettable feature.

FilmFlaneur The Hoodlum (1951)In this sequel to Nosseck's remarkable Dillinger (1945), real life tough guy Lawrence Tierney reprises his role of a scowling, unredeemable thug (he also appeared in the same director's equally hardboiled Kill or Be Killed (1950). The result is another tight and tough little film, if not quite on the same level. The main reason for this is a plot that's less convincing than Yordan's was back in 1945 when the real Dillinger's famously dramatic life provided excellent inspiration. Yordan, who went on to script such projects as El Cid, was plainly more of an artist than Neumann and Tanchuk, providing the story here. Events are more predictable – the anti-hero is even provided with a sentimental death bed scene to weep his belated crocodile tears. Fortunately Tierney plays this final pay off with little sentimentality, even hiding his face rather than letting the audience see him ‘weaken'. As Lubeck, the hoodlum just out from jail finding life too dull working in his brother's pump station, Tierney is once again excellent, up to and including the inevitable denouement. His determined unrepentance creates a thrusting charisma which both Rosa (his brother's girl, whom he briefly seduces, impregnates and discards), the bank manager's secretary and the audience find hard to ignore. As an actor Tierney can manage a cruel arrogance even when working a petrol pump, while Lubeck's cynical disassocation from his family makes him seem a very modern.Interestingly, almost half the running time of the film has elapsed before he commits his first crime, or even fires a shot. For the rest of the time the hoodlum is brooding, contemplating the raw deal he has been handed, feeling as imprisoned by his humdrum job as no doubt millions of others did (and do) at the time. The difference is that he wants to reach for his big break in dramatic and violent fashion as he has it `all figured out now'. Its the heist he has planned, with the desperate aftermath, occupies the remainder of the film.Ironically it is Lubeck's mother whose tears soften the heat of his parole board, thereby releasing her vicious son back into circulation. By the end, along with society, she inevitably regrets this decision, but her role in obtaining his release means that, in some respect at least, she is responsible for the anti-social acts he performs. In this light her final scene can be seen as much an act of necessary repentence as it is her reconciliation with reality.The Hoodlum also boasts a minor first in that Tierney's real life brother Edward appears on screen for the first time, playing Vince's nice-but-dull brother. Despite all his good intentions, he ends up holding a gun on his sibling before literally driving him to his death - an event the significance of which frames the main action of the film in flashback, a typical noir conceit. Edward has little of Lawrence's screen presence, although here the novelty of the casting (which recalls the on-screen partnership of the Mitchum brothers in the cult film Thunder Road (1958 )) makes up for some his gaucheness.Nosseck's muscular, ever hard to see films are overdue for reassessment. His three with Tierney are generally excellent, although hampered by constraints of budget and length. Also recommended is his British black out thriller The Brighton Strangler, more atmospheric than one might expect, and directed in the same vintage year as Dillinger.