His Kind of Woman

Directed by John Farrow, His Kind of Woman follows a professional gambler (Robert Mitchum’s Dan Milner) as he’s paid to leave the country for a full year by a gangster (Raymond Burr’s Nick Ferraro) – with the thin storyline detailing Dan’s exploits at an isolated Mexican resort (where he befriends, among others, Jane Russell’s Lenore and Vincent Price’s Mark). Filmmaker Farrow, armed with a screenplay by Frank Fenton and Jack Leonard, delivers a complete and total misfire that strikes all the wrong notes right from the get-go, as His Kind of Woman, which runs an often punishing 120 minutes, boasts an uninteresting and uninvolving opening stretch that contains little, if anything, in the way of elements designed to capture the viewer’s attention – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a momentum-free narrative that grows increasingly episodic as time progresses (ie the entire midsection seems to consist of scene after scene of Mitchum’s barely-developed figure endlessly interacting with folks at that aforementioned resort). By the time the interminable, action-packed third act rolls around, His Kind of Woman has confirmed its place as an uncommonly awful Mitchum vehicle that could only have worked at a much shorter running time.

* out of ****