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Reviews
Dirty Work (2006)
Gritty Film Noir
One of the best, and most realistic of the film noir genre, in my opinion. Almost all of the major characters in the movie operate in government or in the underworld, and they are all corrupt, or at least somewhat so: look around you and you'll find that to be a reflection of today's reality. Also, there's little-to-no exposition: characterization and plot complication are the keys to understanding what's going on in this film, and I find that challenging and interesting, because it again reflects the reality of how one discerns meaning in real life. The twisty plot unfolds only as we learn who's who, and why they do what they do. The resolution is one of the most neatly drawn I've ever seen: all the disparate subplots come coherently together (a la Shakespeare!). This is a thinking person's movie, definitely not for the jejune who need to have characters tell them what's happening in a movie through usually extraneous dialog. Excellent performances: Lance Reddick, Nutsa Kukhianidze, and Austin Pendleton (one of the greatest villains I've ever seen on the screen).