Violent Saturday

A robbery film set in an American small town. Three men arrive in a small town that lives off a copper mine. They plan to rob the bank and spend a few days watching the place. Before it tells the robbery the film tells the town: the mine manager is unhappy because he is not a war hero in his son's eyes, the bank manager hides his wife's debts, the librarian watches a neighbour's house and a nurse lives alone. So the robbery falls onto a portrait of a town. Everyone is hiding something and the robbery brings it into daylight. The robbers hide at a farm outside town. The farm belongs to an Amish family, and their beliefs about violence set up the hardest scene in the last section. The image was designed for the wide screen and shot in colour; the genre was usually made in black and white, and the choice gives the film a different air. Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine as the Amish farmer are in the cast. Richard Fleischer directed. An interesting production for anyone who likes narratives that join film noir to small-town drama. For a viewer expecting a straight heist film, most of its time goes to the lives of the townspeople.