Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Organnall Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

clanciai This is one of the most intelligent thrillers ever made, with actors like Charles Laughton, Ray Milland, James Macready and Elsa Lanchester adding to the excellence. The main thing about the film is how the intrigue develops. It is a quiet war between an editor and his number one journalist, and while the almighty editor suspects nothing of Ray Milland's involvement, Ray Milland has the more reason to tread the more carefully - and does so with a vengeance all the way through - he actually never has to implicate his boss himself. Maureen O'Sullivan plays the poor wife who has the arduous task of adding yet another intrigue to the horribly mixed up mess of complications by her personal objections to her husband's blatant liberties, but there are several ingenious comedy instances as well, especially the goings-on at the bar where Ray Milland is too well known. There are so many captivating details about this brilliant thriller, that it will never do to see it only once.

dglink A taut, well plotted thriller, "The Big Clock" stars Ray Milland as George Stroud, editor of Crimeways Magazine, who is eager to get away on long-delayed vacation with his wife and young son. Unfortunately, his boss, Earl Janoth, is a domineering bully, who micro-manages his publishing empire and expects his employees to work 25 hours a day, 8 days a week. Charles Laughton plays Janoth like a 20th-century Captain Bligh; his obsession with time, statistics, and costs bring the mild-mannered Milland into a conflict between job and family. Enter Rita Johnson as Janoth's mistress, Pauline York; cognizant of Milland's distress and harboring her own animus towards Janoth, she approaches Milland and suggests that she has enough on Janoth to give Milland some leverage.After a careless night of openly socializing with York, Milland has accumulated multiple witnesses and incriminating evidence of his being with her that evening. When Janoth inadvertently murders York, he calls in Milland to help find and frame a shadowy man he has seen in her apartment building, who was actually Milland. Janoth's overly ambitious associate, Steven Hagen, well played by the congenitally evil-looking George Macready, is eager to help Janoth for his own personal gain, and he zealously pursues any lead to clear his boss and frame another. The plot thickens from this point, and viewers will be held rapt by the tense, exciting, extremely well written script by Jonathan Latimer, which was based on a novel by Kenneth Fearing. Relatively short and tightly edited, the film includes images of clocks, a sun dial, and the huge timepiece of the film's title; the dialog is filled with references to clocks and time.With a fine score by Victor Young, the movie is among the best from director John Farrow, and Farrow 's wife, Maureen O'Sullivan is featured as Milland's wife. Elsa Lanchester, Laughton's wife, also appears as a delightfully daffy artist, and she steals every scene in which she appears in; Henry Morgan is also memorable in a wordless role as Bill Womack, Janoth's faithful masseuse, bodyguard, and all around thug. Film buffs will recognize the plot from the successful rework of the story in "No Way Out," which starred Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman, and moved the action from a publishing house to the Pentagon. However, whether or not viewers have seen the more recent Costner movie or even seen this film before, "The Big Clock" will capture and hold their attention. Tense, suspenseful, well acted, intelligently written, the film is excellent entertainment.

PWNYCNY Besides being a who-done-it, this movie is also a brilliant comedy. Ray Milland and Charles Laughton give stellar performances as men who are at odds with each other, with lethal results. The rest of the cast is also excellent, especially Elsa Lancaster who plays an artist with a quick wit. The plot is clever, the acting wonderful, the cinematography catches the story's mood, and the movie, with all its twists and turns, is in general engaging and entertaining, The movie contains so many wonderful performances. And even though the movie was made in the late 1040s, it's still watchable today. That is, the movie has aged well and deals with issues that would resonate with today's audience. One thing about Ray Milland: he was a great actor with great screen presence, and proves that it this movie.

classicsoncall Poor Harry Morgan. Do you think he was as repulsed as he looked giving Charles Laughton a massage, sinking his hands into that fat squishy body? I don't know, that scene just really creeped me out. And then I thought about Elsa Lanchester doing it for real in the privacy of their own home, seeing as how they were married to each other. Man, I just got a shiver up my spine.Anyway, this is a neat little thriller, even if it's not a mystery once we see the murder committed by Laughton's character. That's when the fun starts as Ray Milland must use all of his wits to track down the killer as all the circumstantial evidence points to himself, even before anyone knows there's a dead body to be found. The film makes good use of eccentric characters portrayed by Lanchester, Morgan, Lloyd Corrigan, and George Macready, with the story taking some clever twists and turns on it's way to a satisfying conclusion.Actually, the ending struck me as just a bit haphazard, seeing as how the picture borrowed from any number of B Westerns of the preceding era. How many times have you seen the villain attempt to frame the innocent hero of the story, only to shoot the character that threatens to expose the real guilty party in front of witnesses. How does the baddie think he'll ever get away with it? Fortunately, the hero comes through as he did here, while the the real killer inevitably gets the shaft.