Nightmare Alley

Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley follows Bradley Cooper’s Stan Carlisle as he lands a job with a traveling carnival and eventually uses his newfound talents to bilk rich folks out of large chunks of money. Filmmaker del Toro, working from a script written with Kim Morgan, delivers a slick yet palpably overlong drama that admittedly grows more and more compelling as it progresses, and there’s little doubt that the picture’s padded-out, patience-testing opening hour ultimately feels as though it could (and should) have been condensed into a tight 20 minutes – with the movie’s watchable vibe, then, perpetuated by Dan Laustsen’s lush, striking cinematography and a series of above-average performances. (Cooper’s top-notch turn as the sympathetic protagonist is matched by scene-stealing costars like Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman, Cate Blanchett, and Richard Jenkins.) It’s clear, as a result, that Nightmare Alley improves significantly once it moves into its comparatively enthralling midsection and second half, with, especially, Stan’s ongoing encounters with Blanchett’s enigmatic Lilith Ritter (and their combined efforts at scamming certain periphery characters) paving the way for a superb third act that’s capped off with a note-perfect final shot – which ultimately cements the film’s place as a mostly rewarding (albeit far-from-streamlined) endeavor that does, impressively enough, fare better than its predecessors (ie the 1946 novel and 1947 movie).

***1/2 out of ****