"That's the way it is. You're a fighter, you gotta fight" ...Stoker Thompson
Thanks to Warner Brothers...this critically acclaimed corker of a movie has been rescued from the cracks into which it had fallen. The Set-Up tells the story of a nearly washed-up 35 year-old prizefighter, Stoker Thompson ,..a fourth rate boxer in a two-bit town, brilliantly & compellingly played by Robert Ryan, in perhaps his finest hour in his finest role. Stoker finds himself on the boxing B Circuit... in the sweltering, smoke-filled, world of seedy nightclubs and cheap motels that thrive in the ironically named Paradise City,......... who prepares to enter the ring against an up and coming fighter 12 years his junior.. , he doesn't know that his manager and trainer have set him up to take a dive , having made a deal with local gangster Little Boy (Alan Baxter) but they don't bother telling him, figuring Stoker is so washed up he's going to lose anyway..foregoing the need to convince him to do it/cut him in...Meanwhile, Stoker's wife (Audrey Totter, herself a veteran of many films of the noir cycle), across the street in their seedy hotel room, tries to decide if she wants to see her husband get his brains bashed in again...tired of wondering if this will be the one he doesn't walk away from, takes an amazing walk along an amazing nighttime landscape.. a garish..moonlit..neon world filled with arcades ( the wonderfully named Dreamland Arcade), bars, and chop suey places.......populated by dreamers, & schemers.
Directed by the prolific Robert Wise.. who effects a remarkable fluidity within scenes, as well as from one scene to the next...the composition of each scene is impeccable in it's details.. background.. each frame teeming w/ life, ..full of shadows....hopes...dreams..& unfulfillment.
I didn't even consider, as I was watching, that there was no music...it was that perfect & appropriate.....this film's soundtrack is the rhythm of life..conversations..come ons, the background from radios & jukeboxes. The pace is propulsively energetic (I stole that line from somewhere..) .................
The Set-Up works as a sports movie...a boxing movie..an allegory...a character drama...with gritty noir elements. ... the dingy and shadowy settings , and the seedy figures that inhabit them.. although Wise does manage to tweak & twist the genre somewhat. The world of noir is a dark one.............at every possible opportunity, someone is chiseling someone else............... & everyone is looking for that million to one shot to make it to the top.
The film..a tight., not at all sparse (this film is LOADED) 72 minutes, unfolds in real time. The big boxing scene, which lasts roughly a half hour...is one of the best, most realistic scenes of its kind... EVER , staged with beautiful rhythm, building and building to a gut wrenching conclusion. Ryan having been a collegiate boxing champion at Dartmouth, of course adds to the naturalism.
The ultimate set-up may be life itself....but what remains to be discovered, are the consequences of the choices made while caught in a web of fate.
This movie sticks with you....an hour..a day..after seeing it...it still resonates...and gets better.
Thanks to Warner Brothers...this critically acclaimed corker of a movie has been rescued from the cracks into which it had fallen. The Set-Up tells the story of a nearly washed-up 35 year-old prizefighter, Stoker Thompson ,..a fourth rate boxer in a two-bit town, brilliantly & compellingly played by Robert Ryan, in perhaps his finest hour in his finest role. Stoker finds himself on the boxing B Circuit... in the sweltering, smoke-filled, world of seedy nightclubs and cheap motels that thrive in the ironically named Paradise City,......... who prepares to enter the ring against an up and coming fighter 12 years his junior.. , he doesn't know that his manager and trainer have set him up to take a dive , having made a deal with local gangster Little Boy (Alan Baxter) but they don't bother telling him, figuring Stoker is so washed up he's going to lose anyway..foregoing the need to convince him to do it/cut him in...Meanwhile, Stoker's wife (Audrey Totter, herself a veteran of many films of the noir cycle), across the street in their seedy hotel room, tries to decide if she wants to see her husband get his brains bashed in again...tired of wondering if this will be the one he doesn't walk away from, takes an amazing walk along an amazing nighttime landscape.. a garish..moonlit..neon world filled with arcades ( the wonderfully named Dreamland Arcade), bars, and chop suey places.......populated by dreamers, & schemers.
Directed by the prolific Robert Wise.. who effects a remarkable fluidity within scenes, as well as from one scene to the next...the composition of each scene is impeccable in it's details.. background.. each frame teeming w/ life, ..full of shadows....hopes...dreams..& unfulfillment.
I didn't even consider, as I was watching, that there was no music...it was that perfect & appropriate.....this film's soundtrack is the rhythm of life..conversations..come ons, the background from radios & jukeboxes. The pace is propulsively energetic (I stole that line from somewhere..) .................
The Set-Up works as a sports movie...a boxing movie..an allegory...a character drama...with gritty noir elements. ... the dingy and shadowy settings , and the seedy figures that inhabit them.. although Wise does manage to tweak & twist the genre somewhat. The world of noir is a dark one.............at every possible opportunity, someone is chiseling someone else............... & everyone is looking for that million to one shot to make it to the top.
The film..a tight., not at all sparse (this film is LOADED) 72 minutes, unfolds in real time. The big boxing scene, which lasts roughly a half hour...is one of the best, most realistic scenes of its kind... EVER , staged with beautiful rhythm, building and building to a gut wrenching conclusion. Ryan having been a collegiate boxing champion at Dartmouth, of course adds to the naturalism.
The ultimate set-up may be life itself....but what remains to be discovered, are the consequences of the choices made while caught in a web of fate.
This movie sticks with you....an hour..a day..after seeing it...it still resonates...and gets better.