I love this movie so much

A different way of telling a story

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

If you're going to be stalked by somebody with a grudge, you don't want it to be Robert Ryan. This soft-spoken, kind-looking actor had a great career playing psychopaths for a good reason: he made them so normal-seeming, and yet so intense, that they were as believable as they were terrifying. From the moment that Ryan, looking like a pleasant, serious businessman, lets you know he has a gun (you'll gasp), the tension never lets up.Ryan here is after Van Heflin, another very fine and intelligent actor, whose character, from the moment he learns that Ryan has found him out, is torn apart by his dilemma, both practically and psychologically. He can't run, he can't hide, he can't fight, but, worse than this, he can no longer evade feeling that he deserves to die. His flailing efforts to escape get out of his control and put him in even greater danger.Why did this terrific early Fred Zinnemann movie die at the box office? The title was a dog, for one thing, boring and vague. There was no romance. But, most of all, the subject was unbearably grim--not just the manhunt aspect but the soul-searching, the questions the movie asks about guilt, forgiveness, and reparation (the scene when Heflin tries to buy his way out of trouble is one of the most chilling in the film). These were questions that clearly preoccupied Zinnemann, whose previous movie was The Search, and whose parents had died in the Holocaust while he was safe in America.All the performances are wonderful, emotional when necessary but never showy. The most disturbing, in a way, is Mary Astor, an actress as classy as her assumed name, who plays a slovenly middle- aged prostitute with self-effacing simplicity. And, despite the grandeur of the theme, there are nice little touches, such as Ryan's being so obsessed by his quest that he tries to cross the street in front of a patriotic parade--a scene that has a grotesque echo later, when Heflin's wife, desperate to save him, has to push her way past a parade of stumbling, leering, drunken convention-goers.One quibble: It is reasonable that Ryan should have some kind of handicap or disfigurement, to symbolise his damaged body and soul. But did it have to be a limp? The limping villain, with the sound of his creepy, irregular gait offscreen frightening people in the silence of the night, was a cliché a generation before this movie was made.

This is some of the grittiest noir I have seen.  This is as close to the bone as it gets- no wisecracking to lighten the mood, no sacrificing of story for atmosphere, although there is plenty of atmosphere-just a dark, straight ahead  story of people with a past, passing through a world where no one is perfectly clean.  There are no epiphanies, no one is morally redeemed.  These are people who have in the past been placed in horrible circumstances by forces largely beyond their control, but the disasters that their lives have become are largely of their own making.Robert Ryan gives a solid performance as the vengeance-crazed vet.  Van Heflin's performance as the guilt- ridden, morally conflicted (and thus morally ambiguous) ex-POW is excellent.  He disintegrates from upstanding hale-fellow-well-met to cringing man-on- the-run as he realizes that his current life is a fragile construction of fantasy that the horror of his past during the war must inevitably shatter.  Mary Astor's performance as the aging barfly looking for "kicks" is stunning and in my opinion, Oscar-worthy, although she was not nominated that year.   L.A.'s original Bunker Hill district is also a standout in many scenes.As with any noir, you won't be uplifted.  You will, however, be entertained by "Act of Violence".

What a great "character" shot when crippled Joe (Ryan) tries to cross the parade line, is turned back, only to limp obsessively across a moment later. Makes no difference to him that it's a patriotic parade. He's in his own world of revenge and by golly nothing's going to stop his mission. This one clever scene tells us more about Joe than a hundred lines of expository dialog.It's aces all around for this front-rank noir. But I especially like the sneaky screenplay. Frank (Heflin) doesn't interrupt patriotic parades; instead, as ex-air force captain, he speaks at them. Plus, he's a friendly guy with a great young wife (Leigh) and toddler kid, a nice suburban home, and a growing business. Yes indeed, Frank is clearly Mr. America returned home successfully from the war. So why does the obsessed Joe want to kill Mr. America. That limp seems to point to a moral defect as well as a physical one, while he's got all the personality of a coiled rattler.As a result, we have certain expectations about who these two guys are and how they will act as the suspense builds. But surprisingly, as events unfold, the screenplay peels back appearances with enough nuance that we may not be aware of the reversal until the end. And in the process, the movie produces one of the more subtly iconoclastic dramas of the noir period.The casting here is flawless. It's Ryan at his darkest and most relentless, and Heflin at his plainest and low-key best. But I especially like the three women—Leigh, Thaxter, and Astor. Their parts are easily overlooked amidst the male-driven suspense, but each performs expertly in demanding roles. And unusual for noir, each tries to perform a healing role for her wounded man, though Pat's (Astor) methods are borrowed from the dark side. At the same time, throw in two icons from noir—the slippery Taylor Holmes (the shady lawyer) and the slimy Barry Kroeger (the hit-man), and you've got an all-star cast of characters.My only reservation is with the last ten minutes. The depot and runaway car sequence was obviously staged to entertain the eye and not necessarily to be believed. I'm all for artistic license and the sequence is beautifully photographed-- it just strikes me as stagier and more artificial than it should be. Nonetheless, this is one of the more surprising and unusual noirs from the classic postwar period, and certainly merits a look-see.

"Act Of Violence" is a powerful and tense melodrama about two men who, during the period immediately following World War 11, are both haunted by the past. The methods by which they struggle to resolve their troubled circumstances differ, as one chooses violent revenge as a solution whilst the other ultimately opts for an even more perversely criminal remedy. Stark visual contrasts are drawn between the brightly lit scenes which celebrate all the optimism and positivity of the period and the more darkly lit ones during which the problems of the recent past are addressed.Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a clean cut ex-serviceman who runs his own successful business. He's happily married and well respected in his local community. Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) is a disabled war veteran who calls at Frank's house and learns from his wife Edith (Janet Leigh) that Frank is away on a fishing trip. Joe pursues Frank to the nearby lake with the intention of killing him but is thwarted when he is unable to get a clear shot at him. When a bartender tells Frank that a stranger with a limp has been asking about him, he immediately panics and heads home.Frank tells Edith that Joe and he were in a Nazi POW camp together and that he doesn't want to see Joe as he's mentally ill. Frank also admits that it was because of Joe that he moved the family away from their previous home in Syracuse, New York. The couple hide out in their darkened house when Joe calls again and his threatening presence pacing around outside, makes the sound of his irregular stride seem extremely sinister.When Frank goes to a builders' and contractors' convention in Los Angeles, Joe goes again to his home and tells Edith that he's pursuing Frank because he was responsible for his disability and the deaths of a number of his comrades. At the convention, Joe finds Frank and after a brief scuffle, Frank escapes. He goes to a bar where he meets Pat (Mary Astor) who introduces him to a "lawyer" named Gavery (Taylor Holmes) and a hit man called Johnny (Berry Kroeger) and between them they make an arrangement for Joe to be murdered. The events that take place when the killing is to be carried out, lead to a resolution for both men and some degree of redemption for Frank.Frank is an archetypal noir character being a rather weak man, haunted by something from his past and who despite his best efforts, is unable to avoid his own destiny. His collusion with the Nazis that led to the deaths of his comrades had been an ill judged action which had been made at a time when he was under duress and the same poor judgement was shown yet again when he made a similar bad decision to conspire with criminals to kill Joe. Neither man is completely noble or unequivocally evil, but both are undoubtedly victims of their recent tragic past. Their story which initially appears to be a simple conflict between good and evil is gradually revealed to be something more complex and disturbing.Fred Zinnemann's direction and Robert Surtees' cinematography are both excellent and combine effectively to unveil the different aspects of Frank and Joe's characters and also to convey all the associated tension and anxiety that they feel throughout."Act Of Violence" certainly grows from its deceptively straightforward looking introduction into an absorbing tale of some substance and profundity.