Excellent but underrated film

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Street of No Return is and is not a real return to form for maverick B-movie director Samuel Fuller, chiefly because he never really lost a form in the first place. But in essence, the story he's tackling here, based on a David Goodis novel, calls out to a pulpy melodrama/film-noir from the 50s ala Pickup on South Street. There aren't any sensationalized messages being laid out like in a Shock Corridor or Park Row, yet Fuller, even at the ripe old mid 70s, wasn't about to skimp out in his swan song for his die-hard fans. There's plenty of "realistic" violence (in quotes because, as Fuller says in an interview on the DVD, it's not really real, but fictionalized there's a deeper reality to the dramatizing of it), particularly the opening riot sequence, one of the best scenes, and in the climax of the film, where everything is shrouded mostly by smoke as cops and bad guys duke it out. There's emotion- in the total Fuller sense- as he still to the end embraces melodrama as something that can work when not distilled for the audience, especially through intuitive manipulations of the camera in point of view and the wallops of timing with the editing. There's even a fairly decent, if a little estranged, performance from Keith Carradine, and an excellent bad-ass cop turn from character actor Bill Duke.But then there's also the side to Fuller, as Eastwood is in the midst of right now, in his style and approach to the script where trying new things goes with going old and having (seemingly) nothing to lose as an artist. The only problem is Fuller skirts the edges on whether or not he's making a serious thriller or more of a satire of one set squarely in the mid 80s. Carradine's character, for example, is an 80s era pop singer named simply Michael (a possible in-joke towards Michael Jackson), who sings and plays songs that are kind of second rate power ballads that only work on a level of cheesy enjoyment; this goes also for his music videos, even though one might sense Fuller working some of his more jokey stabs there, and it's not as abhorrent if one just takes a total sense of disbelief. Actually, that might count for a good deal of the movie, because at the core the story is so set in its one-dimensional ways: the mistreated and helpless woman taken away from Michael (who meet and fall in love in a manner only Fuller could pull off with a wink and a nod); the hard-bitten cop looking at trouble if he doesn't crack the case; the unrepentant criminals- white and black- who conspire to have whatever at their will, either by corporate schilling or by immediate gang warfare. This, plus the musical score by Karl-Heinz Schafer which is maybe the worst aspect to making it more dramatically powerful when needed, hamper what are the better qualities.I wouldn't trade seeing any Sam Fuller motion picture, warts and all, because there's always something to experience and take-in as the director's ideals at showing something compelling from real-life situations (eg the crack years in the urban areas in the 80s, and the underlying issue of race) are never out of sync with making such two-dimensional characters alive and a style angry at conventional ways. It lacks the full drive of a classic, but there's still a pulse that throbs enough to make it worthwhile. Carradine fans, I might add, may be in for a small surprise seeing such a dialog-free performance as a man stripped of his life, or at least dignity, and then given it back piece by piece.

Director Samuel Fuller's films SHOCK CORRIDOR and THE NAKED KISS are among my all-time favorites. His attempts to achieve a kind of gutter-level truth through expressionistic exaggeration make his films completely unique. This film takes the classic noir novel STREET OF NO RETURN by Davis Goodis and turns it into a strange cinematic vision that is intense and brutal, yet otherworldly and cerebral. First of all, the film exists in no particular time--like RUMBLEFISH, it blurs elements from different eras so that it exists in some kind of alternate reality. Also, while the film supposedly deals with American issues, it looks so foreign (it was shot in Lisbon, Portugal, a city that has a unique look, but not a familiar look, as Paris or London or Rome or Berlin would have) that the whole thing seems to play out on an allegorical level. Even the music by Keith Carradine is odd--Carradine (known for his 70s hit "I'm Easy") is rooted in a kind of 70s folk-pop in the James Taylor vein, but his music is given an 80s Euro dance feel, and he looks like glam-era Kim Fowley (in the earlier times in the story) or trashed-out hippie-punk Kim Fowley (in the later times in the story). And while the film deals head on with racial issues, the Black actors in the smaller roles look nothing like African-Americans, which again takes the film away from any realism. Bill Duke is excellent as the harried police inspector, Keith Carradine is impressive as the protagonist (quite different from the book, but not attempting to be like the book, but like the screenplay), and once one gets into the "feel" of the film, it carries the viewer along for a wild ride. This is a memorable last film for the great Samuel Fuller. It has all of his good qualities and visually it's pure Fuller. The strange look and European feel to the film remind us that the man could not get a film deal in his own country and, like Orson Welles, was forced to put together overseas projects wherever he could. The Fantoma DVD presentation of the film is superb as are the extras (commentary by Carradine, documentary about the making of the film, etc.). The women in the film--Valentina Vargas as the woman who Carradine desires, and Andrea Ferreol as the woman who has nurtured him and who loves him but who he sees as a maternal figure (the line about "you've always been like a mother to me" is painful to hear!)-- are both incredibly sexy in a raw, animal-like way that we don't often see in films nowadays. If you've ever enjoyed a Samuel Fuller film, you should seek out this DVD. If you want to try something different, buy or rent this rather than going to see some empty Hollywood product at the multi-plex.

Well this movie brings a big question to me. Why did they do it? With a director, that has been good although irregular. He seems to have done it without caring much about his movie. The actors are very bad, especially Keith Carradine, who acts like a robot, and gives no feeling to his role. They look as if they're asking themselves what they are doing here, and overplay, in a totally not realistic way. The lights, filming, and style of the film, is outdated, of course, but it's outdated in a way that makes it dull. Many movies of the eighties still look good, but this one, just looks old. It seems that Fuller wanted his movie to look modern, but in fact, he was overwhelmed by the era he was living in at the time, he didn't understood what were the times he was living, like a poor old guy, hanging to his old ideas. So his movies doesn't look either modern or timeless. Maybe the book was good, but this strange mix of French and American actors, French team and American director is a total failure.

The movie is wacky at almost every stage, and yet it undeniably works - whether through sheer naivete and flagging relevance or through simple genius, Fuller creates a totally unique and mesmerizing world of vivid colour, strange emptiness and weird evocation. It's clearly meant to be set in the US yet there's not a single interior or exterior which looks like it - Carradine plays an extremely anachronistic Europop star figure, yet the music actually has an underlying longing that's quite effective; the primal device of the black and white race riots is a distillation of Fuller's eternal theme - driven by big business, taking place in isolation on a street of no return, drained of all context or passion: the very first shot of a hammer blow to the head is incredibly jolting. All the noir elements are here, and the memory of better days hangs heavily over the plot - at the end you're amazed by how well structured it is, but it's the blinkered purity that produces the most mesmerizing results. Really memorable and weird.