The Big Town

How do you rate a movie like this, which will never be great, but realizes tolerably, pretty well, a genre shuffle? The genre we might call neo-noir, but perhaps neo-B is better. There is the various filler--jazz, night alley with gleaming wet pavement, lots of bars, a fight club, street jammed with clubs, a elevated train that sparks when the guy and the girl kiss. And neo-filler--more than one woman doing a striptease with feathers and pasties and a bit of French stuff in bed. 1987 pretending to be the 1950s--mom with a little hat coming from church, shiny suits, homely red car. Someplace pretending to be "Chicago," da Big Town. A dice game a smart guy can pretty much always win, even when it's played in many scenes.

And Matt Dillon who's really into it, skinny guy always focused, doing a fine job. A "kid" who can be older, Tintin in a strip club. But it ain't "Drugstore Cowboy."