Detective Story

Detective Story is an adaptation of play, and potentially that can be seen as most of the action takes place in a single room. William Wyler though manages to never make the material seem stagy infusing the right sort of life within that single setting. Now it is there where the film really thrives. Seeing the detectives work the smaller cases, such as dealing with a shoplifter, are oddly enough the most engaging elements. The actors and Wyler makes this moments feel so honest which range from being rather amusing to rather moving. The least engaging aspect of the film actually concerns our main detective played by Kirk Douglas. Douglas's gives a good performance but the film gets bogged down in the character's backstory as well as the backstory of his wife. All of that material feels extremely melodramatic and frankly ill-fitting to the rest of the film. With Douglas's character's reason for "hating crime" seeming out of a rote detective novel and the secret of his wife being more than a little convenient and implausible. That indeed is the main story but the supporting material is the better material. Luckily the film does have a balance between that main story and all the little side stories which do make up for the weaknesses of that mains story.
4/5

Come Fill The Cup

Come Fill the Cup is a bit of strange one. The film begins as though it will something akin to The Lost Weekend as we follow a newspaperman, played by James Cagney, fall into the lower depths of alcoholism. About a third of the way in though he's already hit rock bottom and come back up again in short order. The film then instead extends to the man helping a rich man suffering the same problem, but unfortunately for the both of them a gangster wants the rich guy dead. It becomes a thriller suddenly. The thing is despite the rather scattered nature of the film, it's  actually pretty good in every aspect. The performances are solid and each side of the story is well done.  Now the film does flow rather strangely, but within its strange thru line it never becomes bad. All sections are good even if they don't make absolute sense being pieced together in this way.
3.5/5