Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter
Have I Seen It Before: Never.
Did I Like It: What really makes a noir possess the qualities of a noir? I’m tending to be of the opinion that it will usually involve some down on his luck fella (maybe, sometimes it’s a dame, but it’s almost always a fella) comes into an opportunity to make some real dough. Like, the kinda dough that’ll change him from a two-bit to a real somebody.
Only, our guy here doesn’t have all the angles figured out, see. Bad people start comin’. Bad people with guns. Things go upside down, and our buddy is going to be lucky* to get out of this with his girl and his guts intact.
On that front, I can only vaguely commit to the notion that The Set-Up** is a noir at all. Stoker Thompson (Ryan) is as down-on-his luck as one can get and still have food in his stomach and a leading lady on his arm, but he’s absolutely unaware that there’s money to be made and schemes to be hatched outside of the ring until the last possible moment. He’s not even a part of the scheme. He’s just a boxer who everyone thought had long since landed his last punch, even if he knows different.
It’s a different kind of movie, ultimately, one influenced less by noir trappings of the era, and more prepared to influence films to come like Rocky (1976) and Raging Bull (1980).
*Read: the movie has sort of a soft, artificial ending.
**The cynic in me may want to say that Robert Wise is the journey-man director to end all journey-men directors, but is there anyone who has made more classics in as many different genres? The Haunting (1963)? The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)? West Side Story (1961)? That’s not even going to cover him editing Citizen Kane (1941).