T-Men - Anthony Mann

Seen for the first time in June 2013.

So I've begun to think lately that working my way through older movies has begun to hit a point of vastly diminished returns. Something like "The Big Sleep" is an amazing movie and a great experience and if you see it as a young man, it will have a great impact on you and you'll want to try to recreate that experience. And if it's presented to you as a film noir, you maybe somehow get the idea in your head that since this is representative of film noir, that all film noirs are this good. And so you go through your life watching film noirs and some are really great as well, but you never see another film noir as good as "The Big Sleep." And you never will. Because "The Big Sleep" is the best film noir ever made, and so of course if you want to recommend a film noir to someone to watch to get them into the genre, it's going to be "The Big Sleep," or maybe "Double Indemnity," or whatever or a handful of the second tier greats like "Scarlet Street."

But anyway, you go down this film noir path, watching movie after movie, some better than others, none ever as good as the one that got you into it, and you wake up one day 15 years later after watching a movie like "T-Men" and you wonder if continuing down this avenue is really worth it anymore. You've seen the top tier greats and the second tier greats and now every new classic noir you see is run-of-the-mill tedium. They have all the difficulties of old movies, but none of the transcendence that makes a movie well known sixty years after it appeared. You begin to confess to yourself the shameful thought that you now understand why so many of your peers have such difficulty watching older movies.

A movie like "T-Men" beats you down. It makes you want to give up. It's hokiness, tediously told, dated, and stilted. There's no energy. It's completely lethargic and generic. It should've been a tv movie. But you have to tell yourself not to give in. Not just yet. There are undiscovered diamonds still. But there is a lesson to be learned about the selection process that will help you be more judicious in the future, that will help you learn to avoid duds like "T-Men." We just have to apply that lesson. But also, maybe it would be more rewarding to re-screen past gems at this point than it is to constantly search for new fare.

Grade D.