Gun Crazy (1950)
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
Bart Tare, an ex-Army man who has a lifelong fixation with guns, meets a kindred spirit in sharpshooter Annie Starr and goes to work at a carnival alongside her. After upsetting the carnival owner who lusts after Starr, they both get fired. Soon, at Starr's behest, the couple embarks on a crime spree for cash.
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What critics compared Gun Crazy to
The reference, of course, is to the famous single-take car's-eye-view bank robbery in the 1950 film noir masterpiece, "Gun Crazy," and Korine's staging and shooting are brilliant.
Michel is an amoral chancer who consciously styles himself after Bogart, while the film itself is in part a homage to Hollywood film noir, making a particular nod to Joseph H Lewis's seminal love-on-the-run movie Gun Crazy.
Monogram was originally the distributor-of-choice for Joseph Lewis’ Gun Crazy, the spiritual step-sister of Breathless a decade earlier.
That last bit is swiped from the classic noir “Gun Crazy,” another film using its limitations (in that film’s case, money) as inspiration.
As mentioned, the shout-outs to other films are plentiful, from specific moments and scenes (the camera ratchets up the tension by staying in the car with Gosling during the robbery rather than going inside, a la Gun Crazy; a harrowing car chase with no musical accompaniment recalls Bullitt) to the overall vibe, which approximates a mid-80s Cannon revenge thriller as lensed by Antonioni.
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This is the love, or should be, of Antony and Cleopatra, Scarlett and Rhett and the couple in the 1950 film noir “Gun Crazy” who look at each other like “wild animals.”
Drawing on movies like Gun Crazy, Thieves Like Us and, of course, Bonnie and Clyde, Niccol gives us a combination crime spree/love story.
The movies could use more bad gals these days, more “Ask me if I care?” dames like Peggy Cummins’ sharpshooter vixen in Gun Crazy, Annie Parillaud’s assassin savant in La Femme Nikita, Rebecca Romijn’s slinky-chic manipulator in Femme Fatale.
Maren and Lee aren’t Edward and Bella; they’re Bowie and Keechie from They Live By Night, Bart and Annie from Gun Crazy, Kit and Holly from Badlands, Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers.
The two hit the road like the hunted, gun-crazy lovers in Badlands, Thieves Like Us, and, well, Gun Crazy.
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…a film noir like “Gun Crazy,”…
Allegra and Pikul become a pair of B-movie outlaws transplanted straight from "Gun Crazy" and dropped into the generica of an apocalyptic, Playstation version of "Detour."