Although on the big screen the film noir/crime b-movies were on their
way out (or morphing into something else), television held onto this
B&W gritty aesthetic that, in this case, takes from the 1930's law
propaganda programmers involving a narrator and perfectly-suited cops,
in this case led by Wendell Corey of the titular waterfront HARBOR
COMMAND...
The best thing is that each episode is 30 minutes, so
you get in and out without a lot of fuss or... as happened on another
noir-series, NAKED CITY... without an abundance of early Actor's
Studio-style staging and melodrama, despite the fact that that
crime-pays narration can get too wordy, mainly with expository dialogue
the actors could have tackled otherwise, if not for a few lines...
And
right when the plot gets underway, usually beginning with a certain
crime or heist going bad around the dockside or surrounding warehouses,
the episode cuts to the chase... or rather, the starting gate... So
HARBOR COMMAND is always primed to move... each episode making for
tight, nifty story-telling without an overboard cliche evil dame or
monologue-spouting heavies, and... different from most shows of this
era... there aren't a lot of non-famous cameos... so you feel like
what's being played out is more real than otherwise. RATES: ****
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Featured Post
GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE
Mckenna Grace in GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE Year: 2024 Rates: ** Jason Reitman's GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE set up a rural family to bec...
-
The extremely low-budget of THE DEATH COLLECTOR should not be a detriment since it effectively provides an eerie realism to what's a po...
-
Starts out decently enough, and surprisingly different for Mel Brooks to direct a remake: something that isn't a parody of a serious ...
-
Although on the big screen the film noir/crime b-movies were on their way out (or morphing into something else), television held onto this ...
-
Angelina Jolie playing Gia Carangi would be like, musically, if Jeff Beck played a concert celebrating Eric Clapton... while both Jolie an...
-
Hands down the best scene of EASY MONEY has Rodney Dangerfield insulting a fat kid and his family... where he seems like characters from sup...
-
Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER Year: 2023 Rating: * Ellen Burstyn's Chris MacNeil complaining that she wasn't allowed to actu...
-
Ryunosuke Kamiki in GODZILLA MINUS ONE (doing a JAWS imitation) Year: 2023 Grade: C Japanese cinema (Toho Studios in particular) have made a...
-
Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux in Blue is the Warmest Color Rates: ***1/2 Celebrated French teenage-lesbian romantic-drama stars now fa...
-
If a novelization flows, it doesn't matter how many times you've seen the movie, since, on the printed page, RAIDERS OF THE LOST A...
-
It's not just that son of Jim Henson Brian Henson crapped on his father's MUPPET SHOW legacy by making a crude comedy where crude pu...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.