Impact

Rating:
Summary: You can leave your hat on
Review: Great noir. Bad wife, murder gone awry. Donlevy fixes the car and doesn't even remove his hat. Oh, for the forties. Beautiful scenery of San Francisco! A lady mechanic! Donlevy cries!

Rating:
Summary: Watch This Film And You Won't Be Sorry!
Review: Impact has a very simple plot Walter Williams is marked for death by his cheating wife but when the plans go wrong and Williams is alive the film plays a great game of catchup! Donlevy is the star of the flick and he does more to draw you into the flick than dialogue ever could. He may not be tall but he has an imposing facing! His eyes and strong facial structure is a sight to see! I have to say that the film could have been shorter but in doing this some amazing cinematography would have been lost the image of a prisoned Willams (Donlevey) looking through a gate at his future love is amazing and the scene where his lover chases a woman who is crucial in freeing Williams of a crime through the narrow streets and shadows of chinatown is perfection. Impact may not be perfect but is is a very atmospheric and engaging ride non the least!

Rating:
Summary: Impact
Review: IMPACT is marketed as "film noir," but about the only element of that genre it has in pure form is a treacherous wife and her vile lover. Otherwise it's an engaging crime drama with so many juicy plot twists and surprises that it's impossible to talk about the plot without including spoilers.
The straightforward direction is by Arthur Lubin, who would release the first of five Francis the Talking Mule movies the year IMPACT was released. Mr. Lubin also developed the Mr. Ed television series, as well as directing Maverick and Bonanza. This is a piece with those other works; not a lot of style but uniformly entertaining.
Brian Donlevy is excellent as the wronged husband. In a scene that was probably more shocking in 1949 than it is today, Donlevy sobs uncontrollably. Oddly enough the two women in the movie - Good Girl Ella Raines and Bad Girl/Scheming Wife Helen Walker let drop nary a sincere tear. Walker's character does indeed put on a show of tears for the suspicious detective, played with a slight Irish brogue by the always reliable Charles Coburn.
If you're expecting cartons of cigarettes and a city full of shadowed streets you're going to be disappointed. There's more than a touch of evil in this one, but it's not the focal point. If you want a good story competently told, this is for you. IMPACT is a lot of fun.


Rating:
Summary: Starts out 40s noir, ends up 30s melodrama
Review: Impact shows great promise in its first half, when industrialist Brian Donleavy's wife (Helen Walker -- the psychologist in Nightmare Alley) gets up to some homicidal duplicity. It's hard-core noir all the way, especially when push comes to shove on a dangerous mountain road. But then Donleavy ends up in Larkspur, Idaho, apparently suffering from amnesia, and falls for a girl mechanic. From here on in the tone grows sentimental and "women's-picture"-ish. When the climax comes, everybody seems suddenly to start behaving like imbeciles. There's enjoyable moments in Impact, but it's too compromised to be vintage noir.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty entertaining
Review: Totally implausible film noir but complex & entertaining nonetheless. Bear in mind its a Wade Williams release which ain't exactly Criterion. Picture quality is good; sound is so-so. The 4-star, rave review on the box is written by....Wade Williams.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty entertaining
Review: Totally implausible film noir but complex & entertaining nonetheless. Bear in mind its a Wade Williams release which ain't exactly Criterion. Picture quality is good; sound is so-so. The 4-star, rave review on the box is written by....Wade Williams.

Rating:
Summary: "Fate plays an important part in these matters."
Review: Wealthy businessman Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy) is the victim of a murder plot concocted by his faithless wife, Irene (Helen Walker), and her lowlife boyfriend, Jim Torrance (Tony Barrett). The murder plot goes awry, and Torrance is left dead while Walter walks away. Unfortunately, the police have a body on their hands and assuming that Walter is dead, the hunt is on for the person (s) responsible. Meanwhile Walter, in a state of shock at his wife's betrayal wanders off to Idaho where he establishes a new life for himself.

Charles Coburn plays Lt Quincy--along with a fake Irish accent, and Ella Raines plays Marsha Peters, a war widow who runs a petrol station in an almost comical, idealized depiction of small-town life in Idaho. Some of the scenes involving the volunteer fire department were ludicrous, and they detracted from the overall noir mood. The character of Marsha Peters was totally unappealing--this may due in part to those Maechen hairdos. I kept expecting her to say 'Ja' and grab a milking bucket. As one of the two leading females in the film, Marsha Peters is a hard-working contrast to Irene, Walter's ridiculously spoiled wife. "Impact" blends in many references to the personal deluge in people's lives after WWII. Marsha Peters, for example, is determined to keep the business open--even though her husband died during the war and she really can't manage alone. Lowlife Jim Torrance, may or may not be a former soldier cast adrift after the war, and this notion obviously raises some sympathy from the purposeful Walter. I loved the film's emphasis on Irene's obsession with monograms. This is a clearly a demonstration of her acquisitiveness--displacedhuman