Films I Love #42: The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949)

[This is a contribution to the Robert Wise Blogathon being hosted at Octopus Cinema from September 1-7.]

Robert Wise's The Set-Up is one of the great noirs, a crisp and economical B-movie, its gritty, stripped-down story told almost entirely in real-time, with not a second of excess. The film is as lean and punchy as its washed-up boxer hero, Stoker (Robert Ryan). Stoker's a struggling boxer who