[Director] Phil Karlson copes with his limited resources by concentrating on his characters’ interesting faces. With a small budget, he couldn’t compete with polished studio productions on sets or spectacle, so he pushed the camera into faces — the lazy eye of Jack Elam, Van Cleef’s angular cheekbones, Brand’s granite jaw. Close-ups become the primary tool of psychological pressure. (Trailers From Hell)
Kansas City Confidential is one of my favorite noir films because of John Payne and its gritty violence (“an uncommon level for the time,” according to the New York Times). Payne was a popular singer in the 1940s, appearing in 20th Century Fox’s musicals. His character, Joe Rolfe (a GI Joe everyman), gets framed for a heist. The police try to beat him into a confession and his vendetta against the real robbers, to prove his innocence, sets off the action. The camera work is lively and the cast of characters, especially the criminals with their flaws that lead to their downfall, is noir at its best. The studio promoted the movie as being partly filmed in Mexico and Guatemala, but the location shooting was actually done on California’s Catalina Island, with the studio sets at Samuel Goldwyn Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard (as noted by IMDb). Quentin Tarantino cites Kansas City Confidential as an influence for Reservoir Dogs. When you watch this one, breathe in the editing work done by director Phil Karlson, who started on Poverty Row and learned how to handle a low budget like it was a winning lottery.
