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

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Ruthless (1948)A great, layered melodrama, with flashbacks and male and female rivalries and a really strong narrative thread. There are a bunch of interesting actors at work who never had huge careers, the main man being familiar to me from "Mildred Pierce" two years earlier, Zacharay Scott. The director, though, is a favorite noir director of mine, Edgar Ulmer, who had a string of great films in the late 1940s. So this is one of them, though not quite a noir.In fact, this is a kind of financiers movie, which isn't actually a genre thank God. But the weakest part of the film (at least for a non-Wall Street viewer) is a lot of talk about business deals. Luckily, you don't need to follow them to the letter, because it's the characters--their tricks, their greed, their games--who make it come alive. And of course there are women involved (compelling ones like Diana Lynn), and memories of a childhood girlfriend, so we feel something for the good friend of the leading capitalist male, and even for Sydney Greenstreet, who plays an aging businessman, even amusing.The whole enterprise gets fairly involved and makes you pay attention, which is good, and leads to a pretty spectacular last scene off the pier.

I felt like i was watching the sequel to Citizen Kane episode two, loved the movie kept me on the edge of my seat but it needed Orson Wells! I've only known Zachary Scott through westerns so to see him as a chilling uncaring person was a surprise to me that i enjoyed very much. Diana Lynn disappointed me playing a duel role as MarthaBurnside/ Mallory Flagg she shows the same personality for both characters. But great supporting role up against Zachary Scott. The movie is slow at spots but sustains its plot throughout.Sydney Greenstreet plays the villain no surprise there but would we want to see him in film in any other way think not! I give it a ten Raymond Burr gets a small scene in the beginning of the film as the father to Zachary Scott's character well acted scene though he doesn't have much of a part too short i think he should've stayed in the movie longer. Buy it, Rent it. Tape it but whatever you do get it !...

RUTHLESS seems to be Edgar G. Ulmers attempt to film a story similar to CITIZEN KANE. Like CITIZEN KANE, RUTHLESS is the story of the rise and fall of man from a humble background who rises to the top, destroying several people along the way, only to end up having his past catch up with him at the end. RUTHLESS also has CITIZEN KANE's flashback structure and both characters come from quaint small towns. Unlike Charles Kane, Horace Wooddruff Vendig is a far more ruthless character and- unlike Charles Kane- evokes little sympathy. He destroys his first love, first by stealing her from his best friend, then dumping her for another woman when he meets another girl whose family can provide him with better connections to move the economic ladder. The women he uses, with the exception of his first love Martha, evoke little sympathy. In a way they are just as ruthless as Vendig. The women are solely attracted to him by his power and wealth, and when they are discarded, the viewer can't help feel they had it coming. Don't complain when you play with vipers and then get bitten would be my advice to these women. RUTHLESS doesn't quite deserve the praise some viewers have recently heaped upon it. The pacing is sometimes off and the film is a bit overlong. The cast is good, with Sydney Greenstreet giving as usual (if at times over the top) attention grabbing performance. Director Ulmer handles the direction with confidence and style. Overall, RUTHLESS is a not bad imitation of a much better film, but when viewing it, the viewer can't help think something is lacking.

The combination of Edgar G. Ulmer (of "Detour" notoriety), Zachary Scott, Sidney Greenstreet, Raymond Burr and Martha Vickers, under the title "Ruthless," promises a fairly robust slice of film noir. Alas, what one gets is a faintly Citizen-Kaneish look back over the life of a heartless tycoon (Zachary Scott, who, whatever his strengths, was no Orson Welles). It's a puzzling movie. Scott was a poor child (Burr briefly plays his dad, dressed up to look like a carnival barker) who saved the life of a wealthy girl, whose family then took him under its wing. This, for some reason, became his sole act of altruism, as he turned into a self-centered, manipulative ladder-climber. The story does manage to keep one's interest, but just barely; Greenstreet provides some welcome slices of ham. But the script is tedious, the stylishness nonexistent. If this is your kind of movie, by all means enjoy, but don't mistake it for something it isn't. What it isn't is a tense little shocker along the lines of Anthony Mann's Raw Deal or Railroaded (which I foolishly thought it might be).