Kansas City Confidential (1952)

This vaulted to the top of my list of favorite films noir the second it was over.

This truly stylish and excellent little crime thriller stars John Payne as an ex-con who's framed for being involved with a bank robbery he had nothing to do with. Fueled by a sense of wronged justice, he tracks down the real culprits, who have met down in Mexico for the money exchange. The plot gets much more intricate than that, though, when it turns out that the boss of the operation, an ex-cop gone bad, is planning to double cross the other members of the team and collect the reward money for himself. And it gets more intricate when Payne falls for the boss's daughter, who has come down to visit him at his tropical getaway.

Many of the usual noir touches are present in this film: the anti-hero who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time; the hard-boiled tough-guy patter; the blurred lines between the law and the criminals. The film clips by at a tense pace, and it's an awful lot of fun.

Grade: A

Fmovies: This is a suspenseful, atmospheric film noir that is well worth checking out. I'd only seen Payne in musicals, but here he has a real understated intensity as a World War II vet out to clear his name. (In looks and affect he bears a resemblance to Kevin Spacey.) Preston Foster and a young Lee Van Cleef fill out the nest-of-vipers cast nicely. The wordless opening sequence is especially well done.

John Payne stars in "Kansas City Confidential," a 1952 noir also starring Preston Foster, Colleen Gray, Jack Elam, Neville Brand and Lee Van Cleef. Payne is Joe Rolfe, a WW II vet who delivers flowers for a living. He finds himself accused of a spectacular robbery of $1.2 million because the thieves used a truck like his as their escape vehicle. With the help of a buddy, he finds out that a criminal has split town suddenly for Mexico, and he goes there to locate the man and hopefully clear his own name. What he doesn't realize is that there were four thieves, and all of them wore masks to shield their identities from one another. When the man he's tracking is killed, Joe assumes his identity and goes to the place where the other thieves are supposed to await further instructions from their boss.

Phil Karlson directed this good noir, which has an excellent cast that includes a favorite actress of mine, the lovely Coleen Gray as an ex-cop's daughter. She shows up at the locale to surprise her dad (Preston Foster), who is actually the mastermind of the heist.

Like any actor who worked for 20th Century Fox, John Payne had to be versatile, and he was. Here he plays a rough-around-the-edges war hero who has to survive among thieves by being tougher than they are. The the man known as "The Singing Tyrone Power" at Fox pulls it off. A handsome leading man, here Payne steps into John Garfield territory with ease. Elam, van Cleef and Brand are as mean and low-down as you can get, and the film gets quite violent at times.

The print I saw was very grainy; this wasn't a studio B movie but one made on the cheap, though the film was distributed by UA. However, it stands up very well next to other noirs of that era.

Kansas City Confidential fmovies. This is an exceptional Film Noir movie that almost merits a score of 9--it's THAT good. Like good Noir, it features some of the ugliest and scariest actors and I applaud the producers for finding such a motley group! Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand are definitely the ugliest and toughest looking heavies of the age and here they all work together on a heist. The movie also stars John Payne and Preston Foster. While these two guys weren't as hideous as the other three, they were both well past their handsome prime--hence they were great Noir characters! In addition, the film is bloody and violent--definite pluses for Noir. While this may sound like Noir films are super-violent, they were compared to the average picture of the day but pale in comparison to more recent films. I like them because they are so gritty and realistic in their blunt portrayal of crime. In this case, watching John Payne slap the snot out of Van Cleef is an amazing scene. As for the plot, it's amazingly complex and interesting. So good, in fact, that I don't want to talk about the heist--lest if ruin the suspense. Suffice to say, it's well worth seeing with great writing, acting and all the elements you are looking for in Noir. A must-see for lovers of the genre.

Film noir at its best. All of the positive comments by other reviewers are accurate regarding the acting, directing and appropriately flawed "noir tale" script. John Payne is a textbook noir guy -- just out of prison, tormented, misunderstood and kicked around by the cops (who do not come out smelling good in this story) and a terrible trio of criminals. Add to that extraordinary film noir visual effects. This is exemplary film noir. The framed-in, claustrophobic scenes actually made me short of breath. The scene on the boat at the end is classic, and probably the prototype for subsequent scenes in other movies and TV shows. It reminded me of the Sopranos episode where Tony & Co. killed Big Pussy. The robbers in their creepy masks were so interesting to study that I watched that part several times. It reminded me of Kabuki theater. A real box of candy for noir connoisseurs. I recommend it highly.

This absorbing crime drama is also one of the most well-crafted movies of its genre. It tells its story with few frills, but with plenty of interesting details and a well-timed pace. John Payne gets one of his best roles, with a very good supporting cast. A strong sense of danger and uncertainty is built up early, and is effectively carried through the whole movie, right up to the end.

Payne is well-cast as an ex-convict who gets framed by a very clever criminal mastermind, and who then determines to seek out the truth. In itself, the setup is a familiar one, but "Kansas City Confidential" gets quite a lot out of it, and it is hardly predictable. The story moves from one hazardous situation to the next, with very little pause for relief, maintaining the tension constantly. Preston Foster is also very well-suited for his role as the ex-police captain, and the roles of the three lowlifes are well-acted by Neville Brand and young-looking Lee Van Cleef and Jack Elam.

The atmosphere and characters both work particularly well. The story has perhaps a couple of implausible turns, but in itself it is so carefully constructed that this really doesn't matter. Director Phil Karlson certainly deserves praise for putting things together so well. Very few B-movies are this well-conceived, and as a result it still holds up very well.