Knockout Punch Noir: The Runyonesque, Raw-Boned World of Prizefighting Inspires Tales of Corruption, Violence and Redemption

Humphrey Bogart, “The Harder They Fall” (1956). 

By Paul Parcellin

This post contains spoilers, so you may want to see the films before reading the article.

You’d be hard pressed to find a sport more noir-like than professional boxing. It’s got all of the elements of noir rolled into a savage athletic competition whose object is to knock an opponent unconscious and perhaps spill his blood.

Boxing brings with it the stench of mobsters, illegal gambling, fixed fights, disabling violence and sometimes death. Boxing noirs focus on the exploitation of the powerless, the corrupting influence of fast cash and man’s indifference to the suffering of others. Fighters outstay their viability in the ring and are left broken in spirit and usually penniless. 

The boxing establishment reflects the unjust society from which boxers emerge. They see the fight game as a way out of the maelstrom that is their lives, but it turns into a prison much worse than the place they left.

Like Richard Conte in “Thieves’ Highway,” hauling a load of Golden Delicious apples to a fruit wholesaler in San Francisco, fighters eventually learn that the game is rigged. The average man will never get an even break and will be worse off if he tries to stand up to his tormentors.

Aside from corrupt individuals who run the system, boxers often struggle with their inner strife in their quest to reach the top. They wrestle with self doubt, conflicting loyalties and the threat of annihilation. Their personal lives are typically in turmoil. Pride is often a chief motivator that allows them to make unwise choices. Fans savor sweat drenched, blood spattered competition. They idolize a champ and denigrate an other’s failure. 

The best boxing noirs are pure drama peopled by desperate characters struggling to stay alive in an indifferent world. Like the marathon dancers in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969), fighters risk injury and death just to stay alive — the prize is another day or two of a desolate existence.

Here’s a sampling of some films that display the exhilaration, desperation and ultimate downfall of fighters on their way up:

John Indrisano, John Garfield, Canada Lee,
"Body and Soul" (1947).

"Body and Soul" (1947)

Corruption stands in the way of a young fighter making good in “Body and Soul.” Promising amateur Charlie Davis (John Garfield) reluctantly goes pro despite his mother’s wish that he get an education. The fresh-faced boxer has dynamite in his fists but sags under the guilt he feels over the unfulfilled expectations his mother holds for him. 

When we first encounter Charlie his life has hit the rocks. He’s a pariah to the ones who once cared the most for him. We flashback to his days as an amateur, when some rough breaks force him to make choices about his future. Living on the edge of poverty in Depression era New York, Charlie decides to get into the fight game. He doesn’t want to end up running a candy store like his father. But it’s his dad who supports the young man’s boxing dreams over mom’s objections. 

Once in the world of pro boxing, Charlie encounters numerous promotors and racketeers who have a hand in his pocket. The question is, will the business corrupt Charlie. 

Fights are rigged to accommodate crooked betting. Charlie is ordered to go 15 rounds and let the preordained winner take the contest by a decision. But wounded pride and arrogance can make a fighter go against the bosses, and that’s more dangerous than any combination of punches a prizefighter could face. 

"Champion" (1949)

Ambitious boxer Midge Kelly (Kirk Douglas) will sacrifice everything for success. He has no qualms about the damage he does in and out of the ring in this tale based on a Ring Lardner story. “Champion” is a competent, expertly photographed take on the fight game in the early part of the last century. 

But it has a coat of big studio gloss that softens its edge; Dimitri Tiomkin's mischievous score wants to add comic touches that make the tough stuff more palatable. It doesn’t cop out with a happy ending, but sticks with its tough, uncompromising view of the fight game. 

Unlike the scrappy boxers in other films who lurk in the lowest tier of the sport, Midge enjoys the spoils of his championship. He’s hardly a sympathetic character, save for his hardscrabble upbringing, and like the rising star in a gangster movie, it’s sometimes hard to stay in his corner. As his success in the rings ebbs and flows, Midge is clearly in for a comedown — and that he gets in spades.


Robert Ryan, ”The Set-Up" (1949). 

"The Set-Up" (1949)

“The Set-Up” doesn’t have a complex plot. It focuses on character and packs a lot of movie into it’s 72-minute running time. Fighter Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) is in the twilight of a disappointing career. He’s 35, ancient by boxing standards, and fighting in crummy arena’s in backwater towns. He’s in the low-rent district of fictional Paradise City and set to face a young up-and-coming fighter. 

His shifty manager, Tiny (George Tobias), takes a bribe from the gangster fight promotor who arranged the bout. The trouble is, Tiny fails to tell Stoker that he’s supposed to lay down. He figures that the young wild man will make fast work of the old timer, so why cut the sure to lose fighter in on the action? 

Stoker’s girl, Julie (Audrey Totter), wants the aging pugilist to leave the fight game. Delusional as he is, Stoker insists he could be just one punch away from a championship. More likely still, he’s one sock on the forehead away from permanent brain damage. Unable to bear the sight of yet another bout, she’s a no-show at the fight. Stoker is left wondering if she’s left him and this weighs heavily on the fighter’s mind as he faces a worrisome opponent. 

Much of the film’s first part takes place in an appropriately dingy locker room crowded with young and not so young hopefuls waiting for their fight. Some are punch drunk, some not, and each harbors a fantasy of making into the big time. Whether or not they succeed, each is destined to be double crossed and fleeced by promoters and managers, whose corruption knows no limits. 

Stoker finally enters the ring and the fight is emotionally wrenching and dramatically paced. There’s a lot at stake in this match, and Stoker may be in for his last competition on the canvas.

"The Harder They Fall" (1956) 

Former sports columnist Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart) is broke and unemployed after his paper shuts down. He reluctantly joins forces with boxing promotor Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) as a PR man for Benko’s crooked enterprises. He’s hired to promote towering Argentinian fighter Toro Moreno (Mike Lane) — “promote” is used loosely here. The ex-newspaperman must create a smokescreen of lies, finessing the tough questions his former colleagues lob about the shaky colossus fighter. 

Moreno looks menacing but is meek in personality, has a glass jaw and possesses no discernible boxing skills. Benko’s plan is to pay Moreno’s opponents to take a dive, allowing the grossly untalented Moreno to get an unearned reputation as a contender. It’s a cinch that once the over-hyped fighter meets a real boxer, the oily Benko will bet on the opponent and let the unprepared Moreno face a virtual buzzsaw blade of physical punishment. 

Steiger, as the villainous boxing promotor, is riveting each time he appears on screen. The hyper rat-a-tat  cadence of his speech is hypnotically persuasive while conveying an unspoken threat of physical harm to anyone who gets in his way. 

This was Bogart’s last film and he looks fatigued, but that fits Willis, who’s exhausted by the charade he’s allowed himself to get involved in. He’s trying to keep his mind on the promise of a large cash payout, not on the poor schlump who will face a beating in the ring. Who wouldn't feel a bit weary with all of that on his shoulders?

Dane Clark, Douglas Kennedy, "Whiplash" (1948). 

“Whiplash” (1948)

Artist Michael Gordon (Dane Clark) falls for a woman, Laurie Rogers (Alexis Smith), who buys one of his paintings. They spend a romantic evening together, but she disappears. He follows her to Manhattan, learns that she’s the wife of a thuggish fight promoter Rex Durant (Zachary Scott). 

Gordon decks one of the Durant’s prizefighters and gets recruited to box. They rechristen him Mike Angelo, as in Michelangelo, because he’s a painter. Still angered by Laurie’s deception, Michael directs his rage toward his opponents and becomes a title contender. 

Michael eventually learns the reason why Laurie stays married to the icy, sadistic Rex. Laurie’s brother, hard-drinking Dr. Arnold Vincent (Jeffrey Lynn), who looks after the fighters under Rex’s employ, plays a role in the mystery that is Laurie and Rex’s relationship. 

Mike is finally given a shot at the title, but he’s at great risk when he enters the ring for his big fight. Odds are he won’t survive. 

Here are some honorable mentions:

“The Big Punch” (1948)

A boxer turned minister offers shelter to a fighter framed for killing a policeman.

“The Fighter” (1952)

In Mexico, a young boxer uses his winnings to buy guns to avenge his family's murder.

“Iron Man” (1951)

An ambitious coal miner is talked into becoming a boxer by his gambler brother.

“The Crooked Circle” (1957)

A young prizefighter finds himself being squeezed on all sides to throw a fight.

Danger Lurks in the Shadows of Noir-Tinged ‘Cat People’

Under hypnosis, Simone Simon, 'Cat People' (1942).

By Paul Parcellin

This article contains spoilers,
so you may want to see the film before reading it.

Director Jacque Tourneur said “The less you see, the more you believe” and his film, “Cat People” (1942), proves his theory. It shows how a movie can spark an audience’s imagination when it lets them hear threatening sounds from things that lurk just off screen. We get a palpable sense of phantom-like predators that hide in the shadows, but because we can’t see them we conjure up dastardly images that fill in the blanks.

RKO budgeted the film at around $135,000 and the director made creative use of whatever odds and ends happened to be available. But that suited Tourneur, who preferred to work with a smaller budget. That would mean less oversight and more opportunity for creative innovation.

Others might have found the paltry budget to be a stumbling block, but the director had an ace up his sleeve in cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who sculpted deep pools of black shadow for “Cat People” and another Tourneur masterpiece, “Out of the Past” (1947).

With its spare use of special effects and dramatic lighting, the film’s overall mood places it in the noir camp. “Common to all of Tourneur’s films was a muted disenchantment, a strange melancholy, the eerie feeling of having embarked on an adventure from which there was no return,” said director Martin Scorsese, who is a Tourneur fan and an appreciator of “Cat People” in particular. When discussing the film he frequently uses the word “psychosexual” to describe this story of Serbian artist in exile, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), who is doomed by an ancestral Balkan curse. The curse makes her metamorphose into a panther if aroused by passion.

Mr. America

 She meets the self-proclaimed “good plain Americano” Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) one day while she’s sketching a panther at the zoo and the two begin dating. From the start of their courtship there are signs that Irena is anything but the average girl. She sets off a frenzy in a pet shop when she walks among the caged birds. The bemused owner remarks that “animals are ever so psychic.”

Despite ample warning signs that this may not be a match made in heaven, the two get hitched. During the wedding celebration at a small Serbian restaurant a catlike woman at a neighboring table notices Irena, who greets her as a sister when their paths cross — Simone Simon was cast as Irena, in part, because of her feline-like facial features. It’s a brief, uncomfortable moment that unsettles the guests and sets the tone for the couple’s future. The marriage gets off to a rocky start. That Irena must withhold herself from the man she loves lest she morph into a panther is hardly a formula for matrimonial bliss, yet it’s a secret she withholds from Oliver.

‘Normal’ Life

From the start it’s obvious that the two are polar opposites. Oliver is the picture of a “normal American,” so much so that Smith’s performance borders on parody. His line readings are stiff and his utter ordinariness makes him seem like a Ken doll come to life. It’s obvious that Oliver’s normal American persona drives Irena to distraction. At one point he admits that prior to the marriage he never knew what it was to be unhappy.

  In time he becomes closer to his “work wife,” the perky Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) than to Irena. As Irena’s condition deteriorates Oliver sends her to a psychiatrist to help her deal with her anxieties. But later Irena learns that Alice recommended the psychiatrist and Irena has an emotional flareup over his betrayal. “There are things that a woman doesn’t want another woman to understand about her,” she tells him. Their relationship is at the breaking point, and Irena is driven to takes steps she thinks will preserve their crumbling relationship.

Simone Simon, Kent Smith

The film is all about passions that are on the verge of boiling over and the restraint it takes to hold those seething emotions in check. Reflecting that, scenes are shot with great restraint — no flashy special effects or elaborate sets, but clever uses of the modest sets and props available to the director. A scene that sums up the concise, economical storytelling that Tourneur is known for takes place near the end of the film. When the roguish psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway) attempts to force himself on Irena, she transforms into a panther, but we don’t see the transition, or even the panther, for that matter, nor do we see her return to human form. Instead, after the confrontation is done we follow a trail of paw prints in the mud and suddenly the paw prints stop and a trail of a woman’s shoe prints continue on.

An Iconic Shot

“Cat People” was the first of the films produced by Val Lewton at RKO. The year after “Cat People,” Lewton and Tourneur combined for RKO’s “I Walked with a Zombie” and “The Leopard Man.” Lewton made his mark with “Cat People” in an unexpected way that continues influence filmmakers to this day. Irena and Alice’s rivalry leads to the oft imitated shot that became known as the “Lewton Bus” or the “jump scare.” Roger Ebert notes that “‘Cat People’ is constructed almost entirely out of fear,” and the Lewton Bus is the perfect illustration of what he meant by that.

One night at home Irena and Oliver quarrel and he leaves in a huff to go to his office. Along the way he crosses paths with Alice at a cafe. Irena has  come looking for Oliver and she hides outside. Alice leaves to go home and Irena stealthily follows. As Alice walks along the transverse beneath a bridge she begins to sense that she’s being followed. Echoing heels behind her begin to take on the rhythm and sound of a train clattering along a railway trestle. She looks around, disoriented, searching for whoever is tailing her but there’s nothing except shrubbery swaying in the wind — or is it just the wind? Without warning a city bus barrels into the frame, hissing like a jungle cat pouncing on its prey. It startles the already nervous Alice and usually shakes up the audience, too.

It may not have been the first time the jump scare was used in a film, but it brought that technique into the mainstream and has been repeated innumerable times in thrillers and horror films. 

The Supernatural

“Cat People” exists in a place where film noir and the supernatural intersect, like “The Twilight Zone” and “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” It has aged well, in part because it lacks clunky special effects and because of the ingenuity that went into filming it. Squeezing the most value out of every dollar in its budget forced the director to scale new creative heights. But most of all it’s the puzzle of Irena, the psychosexual underpinnings, as Scorsese would say, of a cursed woman who becomes unhinged by “normal” American life — a social critique that seems ahead of its time and still feels relevant today.

Hey, College Boy, Wanna Rob a Casino?

Four vets attending college on the GI Bill and a
cabaret singer try to rob a Reno casino and 
pull off the perfect crime. 

‘Five Against the House’ (1955):
Part soap opera, part screwball comedy,
with a heist tacked on at the end

A

quartet of Korean War veterans studying at college are best buddies. While they’re older than the average college kid, some are in their second childhood. They chase girls; a couple of them haze a freshman and make him their personal slave. This is supposed to be all in fun but on today's campuses it would break the needle on the creepy meter. All of which has little to nothing to do with the heist that they’ll eventually plot.

The foursome goes to Harold’s casino in Reno, Nev., for a quick shot of gambling before they must turn around and get back to campus. Pop culture enthusiasts may be interested to learn that the film was shot on location at Harold’s, which long ago met with the wrecking ball, as aging casinos do.

By chance, a couple of the guys witness one of the all-time dumbest robbery attempts at the cashier’s window. The would-be holdup man gets caught, but that’s when Ronnie (Kerwin Mathews) gets the idea to pull a stickup of his own. He’s a rich kid who doesn’t need the money, but wants to prove he’s smart enough to rob the joint without getting caught (shades of Leopold and Loeb). 

The idea is to leave the stolen loot where the casino can recover it. It’s meant to be a prank. But Brick (Brian Keith), who suffered a head wound in the war, is a wild card in this shaky spectacle. This gimmick recalls William Bendix’s shell-shocked Buzz Wanchek in “The Blue Dahlia” (1946), who may or may not have committed a murder.

The most serious-minded of the group, Al Mercer (Guy Madison), whose on again, off again relationship with Kay (Kim Novak) takes up a chunk of the film’s first 40 minutes or so, plans on a career in law and the prank is clearly not his cup of tea. But he's tricked into going along with the group.

That a band of such well-scrubbed lads would flirt with arrest and possibly deadly consequences is a stretch. The whimsical tone shifts to somber when we realize that there's a deranged maniac among the lads who’s been waiting to show his cards.

We never feel that this band of preppies is up to the task of pulling off such a hoax, but never mind. The film’s final minutes are what makes it worth watching, assuming that you can hang in there that long. The guys employ a clever but highly improbable homemade machine which they hope will make a successful robbery possible — but then things go wrong. 

With a bigger helping of hijinx, or a more disciplined approach to the caper, “Five Against the House” could have been a winner. Instead, it runs low on chips toward the middle, and just about folds before the game really gets underway.

You Only Live Once: Outlaws on the Road

Sylvia Sidney and Henry Fonda in 'You Only Live Once.'

D

irector Fritz Lang's masterpiece of German cinema, “M” (1931), delves into the murky waters of criminality with an assuredness that few films of that era can match. A frantic search is on for a serial killer who murders children, resulting in an uptick in police raids and harassment of Berlin's illicit enterprises. The police are frustrated in their search for the maniac, so members of the city's underworld, eager to ward off police interference, take matters into their own hands. 

The dark, brooding atmosphere of "M," shot in glorious black and white, crossed the Atlantic with Lang when he left his native Europe and came to work in Hollywood. His vision of the shadowy underworld was destined to become part of the fabric of early- to mid-century American cinema in what was later known as film noir — French critic Nino Frank coined the term in 1946.

All of which leads us to a film the director made six years later. 

A word of warning here, SPOILERS ABOUND, so you might want to stop reading here if you've yet to see "You Only Live Once" and “M.”

Lang made “You Only Live Once” (1937) in the United States, and it’s based loosely on the exploits of real-life bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. In it, the director translates his German Expressionist aesthetics to the American gangster film. As with all of his films, Lang infuses the story with comments on injustices the powerless must face, in this case at the hands of enforcers of the law.

In the opening scene, a prosecutor and a public defender mull over the facts of a case while a fruit peddler complains that a cop on the beat steals apples from his stall. The peddler is shooed away while bureaucrats shuffle papers and bargain over how the law will be enforced. Failing to receive help, the forlorn peddler goes comically livid as a policeman swipes another of his apples right under his nose.

Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda), a three-time loser, is released from prison and promptly marries his sweetheart, Joan Graham (Sylvia Sidney), who happens to be the public defender’s secretary. It was she who turns a deaf ear to the complaining fruit peddler, but as the story progresses her understanding of the justice system will change significantly. 

On their honeymoon they come upon a frog pond, where Eddie discloses that his first brush with the law came when he roughed up his peers who cruelly tore the legs off of frogs. The honeymooners note that these cold-blooded creatures mate for life. When one dies, the other soon follows — an omen of things to come, perhaps.

Death row visit.

Their wedding bliss is short lived, however, when the owner of the honeymoon suite spots Eddie’s mug in a true crime magazine and the couple are unceremoniously booted out.

What drives the story is Eddie's anger over the small and not so small disparities between the way the well-connected and the downtrodden are treated. He's the victim of foolish choices he made as a youngster, and now society and law enforcers won't let him off the hook. 

Set up in a job with a trucking company courtesy of the corrections system, Eddie’s path to redemption quickly turns rocky.

The couple finds a shabby residence, but Eddie's boss fires him for a minor offense. Joan moves into the house without telling Eddie. Reluctant to deliver the bad news, Eddie doesn’t let on that he’s unemployed, but the down payment is due by the end of the week. We see the makings of an alternate plan when he pulls back some bedding to reveal a gun under his pillow.

Last Ditch Effort

Eddie makes a break for it.

Eddie looks everywhere for another job, but has no luck. His boss turns down his appeal for a second chance, and Eddie loses his temper and slugs him. The film cuts to a cleverly shot heist scene — an armored car hold-up in a strong downpour, all beautifully filmed. A man is shot and killed and we see Eddie’s hatband, emblazoned with initials “E.T.” although we don’t see his face.

Turns out, his hat was stolen in a restaurant – it’s the only clue left at the robbery scene – and he is being framed. Joan wants him to turn himself in, but the police find him before he can. Eddie is found guilty and is sentenced to the electric chair.

With Eddie’s criminal record and prison history, the public, the police and prosecutor are quick to believe that he’s the culprit. “Eddie Taylor has been pounding on the door of that execution chamber since he was born,” says one.

Desperation

On death row, he and Joan have their last visit before he is to be executed and he tells her to bring him a gun. She does, but a priest who accompanies her is wise to the charade and quashes the plan. Then, an inmate passes Eddie a note that says there’s a gun stashed in the mattress in the isolation ward.

Shadows in a cell block.

In these critical scenes we see dramatic lighting effects set the mood and help illustrate the story. A shadowy expressionistic atmosphere helps dramatize Eddie's desperation, particularly the jail cell bars casting dark shadows that slice through the frame. They're severe, blunt, and an abstraction of the real world — the shadows could likely never be cast by the light sources we see in the frame. But they make the setting feel all the more claustrophobic while reinforcing the painful fact that Eddie is trapped in a spot from which there is no escape.

A Bold Move
Eddie tears apart a tin cup, cuts his wrist and acts erratically, hoping to be put in isolation. When he’s eventually taken there, he uses the gun to take a doctor hostage and escape.

The warden issues a shoot to kill order, adding that they should save the doctor being held hostage, if possible. The scene cuts to a news ticker tape — the armored car Eddie supposedly robbed has been recovered and evidence shows he is not the guilty party. Authorities issue a pardon for Eddie with a swiftness possible only in the movies. The real killer is Eddie’s former cellmate, Monk.

Of course, Eddie doesn't get the memo, and when he's told that he’s a free man he thinks it’s a ploy to capture him. Father Dolan, the priest who stopped Joan from smuggling the gun, intervenes, but Eddie has lost his faith.

Fog shrouds the prison grounds — another noir touch that reflects Eddie's confused state of mind — and officials are loathe to let Eddie escape with a gun even though he’s been pardoned. He’ll kill the first person he meets, they say. Before he can leave the prison grounds he shoots Father Dolan, his staunchest ally, and manages to get away. 

The Fugitives

Eddie Taylor on the run in 'You Only Live Once.'

Joan follows Eddie to a rail yard where he’s holed up in a boxcar. He's wounded, but they go on the run together, and as known fugitives they are blamed for every stick-up in the area.

Joan's sister wants to send her to live in Havana, but she hits the road with Eddie instead. It's not long before the law bears down on them and both are wounded.

Troopers pursue them on foot to the edge of the Mexican border, where freedom awaits them, but can they make it?

Eddie carries Joan, just yards from the border, and she expires in his arms. We see the pair lined up in a trooper’s telescopic sites. A blast of gunfire ends their quest for freedom.

A Voice from Beyond

We hear Father Dolan in voiceover, speaking from beyond the grave we must presume. “You’re free, Eddie, the gates are open,” referring to the gates of Heaven, rather than an earthly passageway to freedom.

In contrast, "M" ends on a decidedly pessimistic note. The murderer faces mob justice at the hands of underworld figures who capture him and bring him before a kangaroo court. The criminals are unanimous in calling for the killer’s head. The police and justice system, they say, would be too lenient, likely they will institutionalize him, and there is always a chance that he will escape and kill again. But the police arrive before the criminal element has its way, and the murderer is arrested and brought to trial.

Aside from religiosity, a glaring difference between the two films is that in “You Only Live Once,” American police, courts and prisons are called to task for their rush to judgment and use of lethal force that brings about the demise of Eddie and Joan. As for “M,” charges of law enforcement’s excessive leniency probably reflect a segment of German public opinion between the World Wars. 

Peter Lorre in "M."

In the early 1930s, the German Republic was beset by unemployment and hyperinflation brought about in part by the Great Depression. In this atmosphere, political extremism took root, leading to a dark period of fascist rule. We may assume that the public’s lack of faith in a just but faltering government helped pave the way for one of Germany’s darkest hours.

Both films come to tragic conclusions, but each has a distinct difference in tone and outlook. In the blunt closing scene of “M,” mothers of the young murder victims reflect that punishing the perpetrator will not bring back their children.

"You Only Live Once" ends on what some might say is a brighter, if slightly ambiguous, conclusion — Eddie and Joan find redemption in the afterlife. Or, do they?

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich asked Lang whether the gates of Heaven ending should be understood as ironic or as the truth, to which Lang replied, "As the truth." He reminded the interviewer that he was raised a Catholic, although admitting, by the church's standards, he was not a good Catholic.

"I think it was the truth for those people," he said. "The doors are open now."

The priest whom Eddie murders, the only prison official who believed in him, is the voice welcoming him and Joan to the Pearly Gates, while the authorities who judged them harshly likely expect the pair to be shunted off to eternal damnation. 

In Lang’s view, it seems, our deeds are rightly evaluated in the hereafter, and earthly judgment will forever fail society's outsiders such as Eddie and Joan, as it will the survivors of the young victims in “M.” For them, justice will always be out of reach in the here and now.