A Masterpiece!

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

One of the first things I noticed about this entry was its running time. Weighing in at just on two hours it's considerably longer than other Mitchum films of the time, genre, and RKO titles in general, for example the follow-up teaming of Mitchum and Russell, Macao, the following year was much shorter as were Out Of The Past and The Big Steal. Fortunately it's not ALL flab but there's no hiding that Hughes shot it three times before achieving something he wanted to release. The result is a weird blend of two genres one anticipating My Favorite Year features a picture stealing Vincent Price as a blend of Errol Flynn and Jack Barrymore whilst the other is a bod- standard noir with spin in which Raymond Burr plays a Lucky Luciano type mafioso in exile who has eyes to get back to the States and hatches a plan that requires only a patsy of similar build, height, etc, from whom a plastic surgeon can graft the face onto Burr. Enter Mitchum's easy-come, easy-go gambler. Thow in the likes of Marjorie Reynolds, Charles McGraw, and Jane Russell and you have an elegant noir on your hands. Well worth a look.

What a wonderful surprise this film was for me! It had been sitting in my Film Noir Collection Vol. 3 set for years without viewing for some reason until at last I popped it in. Mitchum plays a gambler in need of cash who reluctantly agrees to go to Mexico for a sizable sum of money. The problem? The shady mafia types who send him down there won't tell him what for and why he's being paid. I'll stop there with the story...if you want a further synopsis you can find that elsewhere on here.The film begins rather slowly but is never boring because of Mitchum (was there a more perfect noir actor?) and the dynamic visuals courtesy Harry J. Wild and Farrow's solid direction. The supporting cast is superb with Charles McGraw, Jane Russell, Raymond Burr, and especially Vincent Price, who steals the movie with a wonderfully comedic and hammy performance. The last third of the picture feels rather different in tone because it becomes more of a farce at that point, which I suspect will turn off many viewers, but this noir lover found it absolutely delightful. NOTE: The last third of the film was apparently shot after completion of the picture and was directed by Richard Fleischer.So don't go in expecting the typical classical noir (is there such a thing anways?) or else you may find His Kind of Woman not exactly your type.

I love "film noir," and this film was OK until the end. It's almost as if this were two separate movies, classic dead serious film noir at the beginning later turning into a dopey attempted comedy at the end. I know Vincent Price was a fine actor, but his character was way too silly and "over the top." Also, the hypodermic scene was way too dragged out. Robert Mitchum was, as usual, great as ever; but I wonder if he wasn't embarrassed by the really goofy ending. It's for these reasons that I cannot rate the film higher. However, the thought occurred to me that maybe this was some kind of "experimental ending," some attempt to surprise the audience. However, for me it just didn't work, I wasn't surprised but rather disappointed by the "transition."

The big question about the thoroughly entertaining "His Kind of Woman" is who staged the incredibly suspenseful action scenes? John Farrow received credit as the director of record, but the trivia section about this movie at IMDb reveals that producer Howard Hughes hired Richard Fleischer to re-shoot the entire film. "His Kind of Woman" is an indulgently-paced, ironic, skewering of machismo. This is refreshing ahead of its time when most heroic actors took themselves seriously. Frank Fenton of "Garden of Evil" and "Narrow Margin" scribe Jack Leonard are listed as the primary scenarists. Gerald Drayson Adams is listed as the man who concocted the story. Adams is remembered for an earlier Mitchum effort "The Big Steal" and the Audie Murphy oater "Duel at Silver Creek."Nevertheless, word is that Hughes rewrote the ending, but how much of it did he rewrite. This atmospheric but lethargic crime thriller pits naive gambler Don Milner (Robert Mitchum) against deported gangster Nick Ferraro (Raymond Burr of "Perry Mason" fame), and the a hammy actor who breaks up their confrontation. Vincent Price plays Mark Cardigan who stupidly braves the odds and rescues our outnumbered hero in the last hour. The energetic last hour of this overlong thriller compensate somewhat with Farrow/Fleischer nimbly cross-cutting between Ferraro and the hero and Mark Cardigan as he musters a boarding party to storm the crime figure's yacht. Raymond Burr makes an excellent villain. Farrow does a first-rate job of generating suspense when Mitchum struggles against his captors who are about to inject him with a drug. Clearly, this movie came at a time in Mitchum's career that he could waltz around with his chest bared. Jane Russell enlivens things when our heroes aren't swapping blows or lead with the villains. Anthony Caruso capably plays one of Ferraro's evil minions.