He was the saddest and most complicated of heavies, the most stricken of heroes, and probably the least sung of all the great mid-century character actors. The Robert Ryan retrospective at Film Forum—which ends with a weeklong run of Samuel Fuller's teeming, Japan-set crime thriller House of Bamboo—is among its most essential of the decade. From his villainous turns in the splendid Bad Day at Black Rock and Anthony Mann's great The Naked Spur to his brutal cop in Nicholas Ray's fascinatingly misshapen On Dangerous Ground, there isn't a banal moment. Not to be missed: the 3-D Inferno, where Ryan holds the screen for long stretches alone as a rich cuckold trapped in the desert with a broken leg.
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