Click to read the article
Comment
06/09/08
Ace in the Hole (1951)
86 %
Reviews Counted: 22 Fresh: 19 Rotten:3 Average Rating: 7.9/10
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Synopsis: Billy Wilder, even before the deeply cynical ACE IN THE HOLE, was well-known as one of American film's best satirists. He earned his reputation with SUNSET BOULEVARD and THE APARTMENT, but in ACE IN THE HOLE, one of his personal favorites of his many films, he failed at the box office. The film,... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Richard Benedict
Director: Billy Wilder
Screenwriter: Billy Wilder, Walter Newman, Lesser Samuels
Producer: Billy Wilder
Composer: Hugo Friedhofer
Screenwriter: Billy Wilder, Walter Newman, Lesser Samuels
Producer: Billy Wilder
Composer: Hugo Friedhofer
Reviews
Top Critic
As a filmmaker, the problem with being ahead of your time is that most audiences/critics/quasi-Luddites won't like your movie.
10/30/07
Click to read the article
08/16/07
Not only did Wilder pillory the media in Ace in the Hole, he made monkeys out of everyone. Look at you, he said, you eat this drivel with both hands.
07/05/07
A lurid pulp indictment of exploitation, opportunism, doctored intelligence, torture for profit, insatiable greed, and shady journalism.
01/09/07
Wilder's cynical and uncompromising film of fame-seeking journalists, corrupt politicians, media circus, and the masses' appetite for live tragedy (a man trapped in a cave)was ahead of its time, which explains why it's one of his few flops.
08/05/06
As a diatribe against all that is worst in human nature, it has moments dipped in pure vitriol.
02/09/06
Top Critic
As dark and cynical as Wilder gets, Ace also features one of Douglas' very best performance. Nobody is sympathetic and nobody is likeable. That's why it's so great.
09/28/05
Douglas is wonderfully slimy as a scheming reporter in one of Wilder's most accomplished films.
06/23/04
Not unlike Fritz Lang’s equally misanthropic Scarlet Street, Ace in the Hole plays the squashing of one man’s human spirit for societal-weary gravitas.
01/19/04
Douglas puts a perfect spin of self-loathing on his character in what is certainly one of his better performances.
05/24/03
Top Critic
The film is as grim and pitiless as the relentless drill that pounds away at the mountain top.
02/04/03
Ace in the Hole is badly weakened by a poorly constructed plot, which depends for its strength upon assumptions that are not only naive but absurd.
09/09/02
Top Critic
IGN RSS Feeds