Ace in the Hole |
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“It’s a good story today. Tomorrow they’ll wrap a fish in it.”
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1951 - US
Director Billy Wilder Starring |
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I’m not sure this one suffered from great expectations (I knew all along it wasn’t my ‘kind’ of story, though in its writer/director I was sure I’d find much to admire), but I have to admit from the start that this one didn’t live up to the hype surrounding its Criterion release, for me. Wilder’s overwritten patter and comic style works well in styles as diverse as broad comedy and darkly comic noir, but it struck me as very out of place in a dead-serious socio-political diatribe such as this. Kirk Douglas plays his role in yuk-yuk style well befitting other Wilder works, but again it rubbed me the wrong way here. Anyway, this seemed to detract from, rather than enhance, the power of what has been called Wilder’s most “uncompromising” work.
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