Underworld U.S.A. (1961)

I'll tell you why so serious

Fresh and Exciting

Absolutely brilliant

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Underworld U.S.A. (1961)Sam Fuller's movies have an edgy, reckless quality to them, as if lacking propriety. Which is good. What Underworld U.S.A. lacks in subtlety it makes up for in surprise and a kind of sultry sizzle, something very different than more usual "romance" that other crime and noir movies have. There is some second rate acting throughout, but if you accept some of this as "style" and go with the flow, it's click along nicely. In fact, the lack of star power makes the film a hair more everyday, and therefor a hair more realistic in a good way. And the lead male going solo through much of it is first rate, Cliff Robertson.Not that this is actually believable--it feels contrived all the way--but it has a modern interpersonal selfishness and sometimes cruelty that is fun to watch. The plot? Great enough. But the searing looks, the slaps, the brooding closeups. This is movie-making! Certainly an influence on Tarantino.As a black and white crime film with a slightly low budget feel, this naturally comes labelled as a film noir. And there are some similarities. But it's also a crime drama, more directly, and it explores (and exploits) the violence of cops and robbers circa 1960. There a lot of unsavory types involved, and some crisp filming. If you like other Sam Fuller films, you'll like this one.

***SPOILERS*** Director Samuel Fuller takes a crack at organized crime in this murder and revenge thriller involving young Tolly Devlin, David Ken & Cliff Robertson when he's all grown up, who was an eye witness to his father's murder.It's not that old man Devlin was an upstanding and law abiding citizen he was a mobster himself but what happened to him, beaten to death by four hoodlums, shouldn't have happened to a mad and rabid dog much less then to a human being. Young Tolly there and then made up his mind that he'll tack down his dad's killers and exact justice on them if that's the last thing he does!It took a while for Tolly to find his father's killers but a stint behind bars, for safe-cracking, brought unexpected results. Recognizing one of his father's killers Vic Farrar, Peter Brocco,in the prison hospital dying from cancer Tolly got him to confess his sins so he can die in peace and with a clean slate when he stands before his creator. With his last dying breath a repetitive Farrar reveal to Tolly those hoods who along with him murdered his old man. Tolly later finds out, through a newspaper headline, that the three other hoods who murdered his dad Gela Smith & Gunther, Paul Dubov Allan Gruener & Gerald Milton, are now the top men in the notorious Earl Connors, Robert Emhardt, crime syndicate.Using his girlfriend-and former hooker- Cuddles, Dolores Dorn, who's life he once saved Tolly gets in on the inside of the Connor's crime syndicate, by posing as a drug pusher, in order to get to those who murdered his father and make them pay dearly! Playing both sides against the middle Tolly works both with the Connor's Mob and the local D.A John Driscoll, Larry Gates, which turned out to be disastrous for him. ***SPOILERS*** Cliff Robertson had a real great time playing Tolly Devlin in the movie using, or copying off, the facial expressions as well as body language of the late great Paul Muni in his blockbuster 1932 gangster epic "Sacrface". Robertson, as well as director Fuller, also did his best to copy the legendary death scene by James Cagney in the 1939 gangland flick "The Roaring Twenties". Besides Cliff Robertson's convincing acting, as a borderline psycho, there's also Beatrice Kay as Tolly's adoptive mom Sandy. As much as Sandy tried she couldn't prevent Tolly from suffering his dad's fate which was preordain the moment he choose to step into his hoodlum father's shoes!

Writer/director Samuel Fuller is not personally attached to the material he presents in Underworld USA in the sense of it being autobiographical. But it is pretty likely, from listening to interviews with him and just from seeing his other work in the noir-esquire realm of motion pictures, that he knew at least the world these characters are in. Or at least he knows what kinds of emotions and what lies underneath certain aspects of lesser pulp fiction- and has a kind of journalistic sensibility that is all his own, telling it like it is from the mean streets of who-knows. It's got an assured eye working the gears, and it by-passes some usual clichés to get at some more interesting bits within some of the conventions. This is in the bones just a tale of revenge, but Fuller wants the little things and moments that make up such a tale, and how the characters can be more realized than might usually be. I liked, for example, early on when Tolly Devlin is 14 and makes a comment to his mother about something in the middle of their conversation- the mother doesn't say anything, but there's a quick, tight close-up of her face to catch the moment. It actually stuck with me longer than I expected, even as the main parts of the scene went along.Another part that really, really impressed me was when Devlin (Cliff Robertson, not bad at all in a part that gets to stretch his skills somewhat), nearing the end of his prison term, and finally finds one of the men who beat his father to death when he saw when he was 14. The scene is very tense, but somehow very human too, as Tolly has to contend with a dying man that he has to kill with his own hands. Soon, Fuller gets the gears of the story going further, as he vows revenge against the others who committed the crime, making him pull an undercover act to infiltrate the mob to get close to them, particularly Earl Conners (Rober Emhardt, a plum role for him considering all of his TV parts). But he also falls for a woman, Cuddles, played by Dolores Day, and like Fuller's Crimson Kimono, the weight of the main thrust of what Tolly needs is balanced against what he could also have with his possible romantic interest, caught up in the emotional bog he's in.I liked a lot how Robertson tapped well enough into the character to make him plausible, even sympathetic. He understands what Fuller is going for, a slightly more realistic- or more powerful kind of representation in the midst of the hard-boiled dialog and more complicated scenes- as he's playing a character who actually has a past, a childhood shown as shattered and made as the complete context that he has to contend with as an adult, despite women around him telling him otherwise. I still remember plenty of shots in the film too (not the gun-shots, the camera-work I mean), and this is after having seen the film months ago, and the driving musical score from Harry Sukman (a solid Fuller collaborator). That Fuller extracts a good deal of compelling entertainment out of a premise that seems pretty standard and even slight is remarkable, and ranks among the other fine superlative B-movies he was doing at the time.

So here we have a characterization comparable to Richard Widmark's in Kiss of Death... and yet, obviously, Richard Rust did not receive the promotion one needs to be noticed! But I noticed. And when someone said to me, "Check out Cliff Robertson's white suit", I said, "I didn't even notice him, I was looking at Richard Rust..." Not that everyone else in this film wasn't good, but from the putting on of shades to the turning a zippo in his hand, from his coldness in killing a child to his creepiness in saying he likes lifeguarding for children, from his great profile to his screen presence...here's an ACTOR! As Sadakichi Hartmann said about himself, Richard Rust must have been too great to be noticed. But I saw him. Thank goodness!!