Translator
Based on the famous Leopold and Loeb murder case (from which two other films, COMPULSION and SWOON, were also derived), ROPE both challenges and terrifies the audience. Alfred Hitchcock disdained the whodunit crime story, which he felt lacked emotional force, and ROPE shows the director’s preference for letting the audience know more than the characters onscreen. The film opens as two young men (Farley Granger and John Dall) strangle a friend just to prove they’re intellectually capable of committing the perfect crime. To add to the amusement, they hide the body in a trunk that will serve as the dinner table for a party honoring the deceased. The film hones in on an hour and a half of the party, with the constantly moving camera capturing the changing emotional atmosphere as the guests grow increasingly concerned about the fate of the missing boy. ROPE is a directorial tour de force, blending complex camera movement with intricate staging to present the entire story in near-real time in one location. Notably, the adaptation of the play by Patrick Hamilton was written by perennial Hitchcock actor Hume Cronyn.
Continuing the story-line which unfolded in “Kill Bill Vol. I,” this is a revenge tale of an expert assassin, called The Bride, who sets out on a quest to wreak vengeance upon her former employer, Bill, and other members of their assassin circle, for shooting her on the day of her wedding–along with all The Bride’s guests in attendance–and leaving her for dead. When this chapter in the story begins, The Bride will have already encountered some of her targets, having battled her way up the chain of command. So, after dispensing with former colleagues O-Ren Ishii and Vernita, she resumes her quest for justice. With those two down, the Bride has two remaining foes on her ‘Death List’ to pursue–Budd and Elle Driver–before moving on to her ultimate goal: to KILL BILL.
Sam “Ace” Rothstein, the consummate bookie who can change the odds merely by placing a bet, has risen through the ranks of the Midwestern mob to be picked by the bosses to front their entree into Vegas. Ace lives and breathes the odds. He eventually doubles the mob’s take and changes the rules of how the casinos are run. But he can’t control the odds when it comes to Ginger McKenna, the chip-hustling vamp who charms Ace and becomes his wife. His infatuation with Ginger turns to obsession as she rises with him to the upper crust of society, then turns to the bottle and pills for consolation in her gilded cage. The third member of this triangle of greed and obsession is Nicky Santoro, Ace’s best friend and fellow graduate of the city streets. Together, they run the perfect operation, with Ace in charge and Nicky providing the muscle. But as Nicky expands his interests and each man gains power, their lives become entangled in a story of hot tempers, obstinacy, money, love and deception.
A Brentwood housewife and her D.A. husband. A Persian store owner. Two police detectives who are also lovers. An African-American television director and his wife. A Mexican locksmith. Two car-jackers. A rookie cop. A middle-aged Korean couple. They all live in Los Angeles. And during the next 36 hours, they will all collide.
A collection of law-dodging characters in London are brought together by coincidence when a streetwise young man loses half-a-million pounds in a card game. He has a week to get together the money or face losing some fingers. Desperate, he and his friends decide to rip off a gang who are planning to rip off a bunch of ganja farmers. Simple. Except the drug dealers want their money back, as do the theives, and now there are three sets of criminals after their blood.
A lone surveillance expert, with a meticulous devotion to his work and a policy of never getting personally involved in the jobs he’s given, finds himself slowly drawn into an assignment that he starts to detect has major ramifications. He then grapples with his code of non-intervention.
