Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Film: Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Stars: John Payne, Coleen Gray, Preston Foster, Neville Brand, Lee van Cleef, Jack Elam

Director: Phil Karlson

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

Good filmmakers watch movies.  I can always tell when a director is going to have a long career during a press tour when they mention movies that they grew up on, and it wasn't just movies that someone their age would naturally love.  No director in the past 35 years encapsulates this quite like Quentin Tarantino.  Tarantino, whenever he talks about films, will talk about the most esoteric pictures from the most obscure corners of Hollywood.  With Kansas City Confidential, though, he more than just watched it.  Seeing this film for the first time, it's impossible not to see the influences the picture would have on Tarantino's first feature-length film, Reservoir Dogs.  The beginning, in fact, is cribbed almost verbatim from it, which makes you understand why Tarantino was such a visionary-to find a pretty average film, and make one of his best pictures from it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with a man named Mr. Big, wearing a mask, recruiting three men to a crime he's committing: Peter (a gambler, played by Elam), Boyd (a murderer, played by Brand), and Tony (a womanizing getaway driver, played by van Cleef).  The four of them stand up an armored car for a bank, and in the process get away with the money, implicating a deliveryman named Joe Rolfe (Payne) in the process.  Rolfe is exonerated when his alibi for the crime checks out, but in the process he loses his job and vows revenge.  He eventually finds out that Peter left the city, and pursues him to Tijuana, where Peter is killed by the police, and Rolfe takes over his identity.  He tries to get a share of the money for his troubles, but in the process falls for a young law student named Helen (Gray) who is visiting her father Tim (Foster) in Tijuana.  It turns out that Tim is Mr. Big, and he did this as revenge for being fired at the Kansas City Police Department, and his plan was to pin the crime on the three men, getting his honor back after being fired in a scandal, and using the reward money to start a new life.  This doesn't go to plan when the men find out, and Tim is killed.  With his dying breath he ensures Helen will not know what he did, and that Rolfe will get the money, presumably to marry & take care of Helen.

If you've seen Reservoir Dogs, you understand the overlap here between Tarantino's picture and Kansas City Confidential.  Both films start with a bunch of criminals perpetrating a crime where none of them knows the others' identities.  In that film, they use colorful names like "Mr. Pink" (Tarantino has a flare for the vibrant), but in both films this concept works really well.  The best parts of Kansas City Confidential are the beginning, where we get this live wire crime moment that crackles, and you don't entirely know if they'll get away with it (or how).  Casting really strong character actors like Jack Elam & Lee van Cleef (both of whom are best-known today for classic Sergio Leone westerns like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in the West) is a nice touch-the supporting cast here is really solid, and helps elevate a standard film noir once you get past the main, ingenious concept.

If only they hadn't cast John Payne.  I feel bad, as Payne was once one of our Saturdays with the Stars, and I should be nicer to him, but while he's handsome he's rarely any good in movies, and this role needs a lot more charisma.  Put in someone like John Garfield or William Holden, someone with a bit more edge whom it's believable would actually seek revenge, and you're in a stronger spot with the plot.  But the sub-romance with Gray is listless, and she doesn't remotely resemble a femme fatale (which also would've been a fun wrinkle).  With two leads that can't connect, Kansas City Confidential is just a good concept more than a good movie...but a concept that would lead to a great movie 40 years later.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Caught, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Side Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach, A Woman's Secret

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps, Whirlpool

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai