Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
An arrogant reporter exploits a story about a man trapped in a cave to revitalize his career.
Billy Wilder's savage media satire is a genuinely prescient and scathing indictment of exploitation journalism and mob mentality. Chuck Tatum is one of cinema's great anti-heroes, and Kirk Douglas delivers one of his finest performances with reptilian charisma. The plot is tightly constructed with mounting dread. Novelty is exceptionally high — the film was decades ahead of its time in diagnosing spectacle-driven news culture, and its uncompromising cynicism was so radical it flopped on release. The ending is brutally, unforgettably apt. Cinematography, while competent and well-composed in its desert exteriors, is the one dimension that doesn't quite reach the same heights as the other elements — functional and atmospheric but not visually transcendent in the way the writing and performance are.