Review of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) by Nikolai E — 06 Jan 2008

If you only watch one film noir in your entire life, make it this one. It perfectly encapsulates every genre convention, while at the same time lightly mocking them. The inventive opening shot, the way we only ever see the villain's shoes, the raunchiness of the hero, these are all fine touches, but nothing compares to the sheer brilliance of the film's final 20 minutes, where the stakes are raised both literally and metaphorically to rhapsodic extremes.

The best payoff of any "what's in the case?" movie in history.