Which non-indian film u saw recently has made u post here???

[kid-glove]

Excellent, Thilak.

Film Noir:
Doomed characters.
(as per Thilak's definition) Everything is not as it seems.
Protagonist who gets bounced like a bloody ping pong ball.
Feeling of being trapped (use of bars, fence, gate shadow falling on characters)
basically living in a rotten world.
Behind the already shrunken protagonist lies bigger, evil scheme that he's helpless to do anything about.
Helpless is the key word here.
Crime does not pay, especially if the protagonists involved in it.
There's lots of hate going on (re. some of Robert Mitchum's stuff)
Protagonist is not a happy dude at the climax. Leave that to the westerns.

Even without going to its Noir conventions & subversion (that they end up calling it neo-noir), it's a fine, fine film.

P_R,
'lous' happen in a very 'plausible' manner, and not 'out of the way' at all. After the tumultuous encounter, the sexual intimacy is born out of the moment (& that's how it's shown). It's also part driven by vulnerability (characteristic soft-center of hard-boiled noir.) as Jakes slightly opens up to her (even while keeping it to 'sex' with the just-widow), she first uses this to surreptitiously dodge his advances to dig the actual truth as it's far too disgusting & painfull to reveal. And the audience, like Jakes, isn't quite assured too. Only later would we, by the way of Jakes, trail, peak, & dig it up. Both Nicholson & Dunaway play the characters as they should, each wanting to "read" each other. But neither is thinly drawn out to trust one another. Look at all their encounters until the tirade of slaps..