Review of Touch of Evil (1958) by Alison O — 16 Jun 2009

The first four minutes of "Touch of Evil" are the most perfectly orchestrated film-making at the time (and perhaps still today) - the choreography of vehicles and actors in motion, multiple cuts of music, dialogues and several points during which the camera pans over or through a building following a car of people is incredible.

The performance by Welles is engrossing - so bigoted, so power-hungry, and so larger than life he fills up the screen with more than his lumbering, hulking size. Camera work is wonderful, and Janet Leigh is excellent in the perpetually gutsy, but always a bit faint damsel-in-distress role.

Charlton Heston as a top-ranking Mexican drug investigator is oddly-cast and inauthentically played, but he delivers a great performance in spite of having been cast at the behest of the studio. Still a great film more than 50 years later!