Gun Crazy

John Dall is reformed juvenile delinquent turned gentle marksman Bart Tare and Peggy Cummins is Annie Laurie Starr, a sexy sideshow markswoman in a cheap travelling carnival in this exhilarating 1950 film noir from director Joseph H. Lewis. Bart is obsessed with guns but at heart is a sensitive guy who takes up a life of crime in order to hang on to Annie, who wants money and doesn't care how she gets it (but she's no mere femme fatale; her passion for Bart is genuine). Lewis turns this thriller about criminal lovers on the run into an explosive and passionate mix, stirring together sex, guns, love, and violence into a proto-Bonnie and Clyde. Mixing documentary-like realism with bravura style and expressionist exaggeration, Lewis creates one riveting set piece after another on a starved budget, filming a heist and subsequent high-speed getaway in a single long take without ever leaving the back seat of the car. But what fuels the film is the smoldering passion that burns through the screen as the couple’s doomed romance careens out of control down the highway to hell. Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo co-wrote the script under the name Millard Kaufman and a young Russ Tamblyn plays the boyhood Bart in the opening scene. Bowing on Blu-ray in a newly remastered transfer from the 2013 restoration, extras include audio commentary by critic and film noir specialist Glenn Erickson, and the 2006 documentary Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)