"The bullet hasn't been made that can kill me!"
Budd Boetticher repurposes his efficient Western formula for the gangster movie with The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960). The film has its modest charms, but never transcends its genre like Boetticher's best works.Small-time hood Jack "Legs" Diamond (Ray Danton) moves from Philadelphia to New York City with his sick brother Eddie (Warren Oates). After spending time in jail for a burglary, Diamond becomes a bodyguard and enforcer for mob boss Arnold Rothstein (Robert Lowery). Diamond's ambitions extend beyond button work, and after Rothstein's death he muscles his way into power within the New York syndicate. Everything goes swell until he's betrayed by girlfriend Monica (Elaine Stewart), who sets him up for mob rivals.
Joseph Landon's staccato script moves efficiently through incidents in Diamond's career, barely stopping to breathe for characterization. Diamond's a sweet-talking crook who weasels his way into the mob, first by charging goods to Rothstein's account, then exploiting inter-mob tensions to advance himself. He becomes noted for his indestructibility, surviving repeated murder attempts and botched robberies, and his temper, which makes him both a danger and an easy mark for elimination. Out for himself, he has no ability to think within the structures of organized crime.
It's a simple rags-to-riches gangster story, the kind Warner Bros. specialized in through the early '30s. Boetticher's Westerns worked their magic by investing hoary plots with richness and unexpected depth. Diamond, on the other hand, shows little beyond its barebones storyline. Boetticher jazzes things up with expressive period sets (the costumes scored an Oscar nomination), efficient pacing and brutal violence, but its hero doesn't offer much more than unrepentant cruelty. The movie's cleverness lies in marginalia, like a montage of Legs watching newsreels of his imperiled empire in cinemas across Europe.
Another problem might be Ray Danton, a Warners contract player who resembles a rough-hewn Gregory Peck. Danton acts with one note of fierce, snarling confrontation, proving an adequate lead at best. The supporting cast is somewhat more colorful. Warren Oates makes his first major role, already showcasing his unique violent sad sack quality. Karen Steele and Elaine Stewart play Diamond's girlfriends, one a naïve girl driven to drink, the other a lascivious, backstabbing harpy. Frank de Kova and Robert Lowery play more collected, intelligent Mafiosi.
The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond isn't bad by any stretch: a gifted director like Boetticher invests even middling material with grace notes. Yet it doesn't seem like anything more of a pastiche of older crime pics, several decades too late.