ACE IN THE HOLE

If you want cynicism in your movies you need look no further than the films of Billy Wilder and "Ace in the Hole", which he made in 1951, is as cynical as they come and while Kirk Douglas could well be the nicest man in Hollywood when it came to playing men you love to hate Douglas was in a class of his own. Chuck Tatum, the character he plays here, has become one of the movies' great anti-heroes, a grade A bastard who exploits a real-life tragedy for the sake of a good story; it's an Oscar-worthy performance and probably the best thing he's ever done. There's great work, too, from Jan Sterling as the wife of a man trapped in a cave, (and the subject of Tatum's story). She's some piece of work, a tramp who would rather see her husband die so she can escape the no-horse town they live in. "I've met some hard boiled eggs in my time", she tells Douglas, "but you, you're twenty minutes". With so many unpleasant characters on screen it isn't an easy movie to engage with but it has the same cold, hard brilliance of "Double Indemnity" and is as powerful today as it was when it first appeared