Rating of
3.5/4
The scent isn't what you'd expect....
Indyfreak - wrote on 01/17/17
The formidable 1957 drama SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS is ripe with rich dialogue and a scathing sense of humor against a dark backdrop of NYC that is corrupt and seedy.
Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis trade their matinee idol personas for two of the most reprehensible and loathsome villains to appear in a film noir from Hollywood's Golden Age. Lancaster is J.J. Hunsecker, the most powerful columnist in America who is misanthropy incarnate that holds everyone else in scorn and contempt. His servile lackey is press agent Sidney Falco who against his own sense is available at Hunsecker's every whim and dirty deed.
His latest task is orchestrating the breakup between Hunsecker's young sister and a kindhearted jazz musician. It's a mission filled with sharp twists, snappy dialogue, and an underlying ugliness just brimming at the surface. The script is ahead of its time with its darkly satirical edges that one can consider it a forerunner of the likes of Network only far more sinister.
