Kiss of Death (1947)

Victor Mature must turn stoolie in order to see his kids again, ultimately coming into conflict with psycho killer Richard Widmark. Really very good.

Widmark is an awesome psycho gangster killer. He's got an obsession with physical size, constantly tossing about the derogatory nickname "Squirt", and he also talks extensively about gouging peoples' eyes out. It's creepy. At one point, he throws an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. Man, that's cold.

Apparently, this film is an example of docu-noir, or noir with more of a stab at film realism. The only real way it does this is by shooting largely on location, leaving only really the finale to be filmed on a backlot.

The ending reminded me quite a bit of Drugstore Cowboy, except that there is an annoying voiceover that suggests that a character who should be dead (having just been shot repeatedly at near point blank range) is not dead.

And, for some reason, every time I hit the apostrophe key on my laptop, Firefox throws open the ctrl-f find dialogue. Which is puzzling. For some time now, Firefox has not been switching tabs in order when I ctrl-tab, and this is just another annoyance. In all fairness, though, my laptop is eight million years old (if still incredibly sexy).