Touch of Evil is an innovative, scintillating, and strikingly modern noir mystery thriller. With Orson Welles both in front of and behind the camera and primarily superb performances, intense twists, and intelligent questions, the film injects heavily entertaining intellect in a genre that is often tropified. In a bustling town on the U.S.-Mexico border, a bomb explodes inside a car, killing two people. Mexican special prosecutor Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston) and his wife Susie Vargas (Janet Leigh) are honeymooning in the same town. The prosecutor quickly becomes interested in observing the investigation. It is led by police captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), an anti-Mexican bigot and recovering alcoholic with a prosthetic leg he refers to as his “game leg” that gives him conclusive hunches about all his cases and his obsessive, fan-like partner Pete Menzies (Joseph Calleia). As the investigation unfolds and Quinlan finds a culprit, Vargas quickly becomes suspicious of the supposed evidence, leading to serious doubt in Quinlan himself. The film soon thickens from here as implications of the characters’ pasts, current actions, and broader questions of police authority and corruption fill screens with bubbling intrigue.

Touch of Evil is uneven and discernibly jumbled, but its countless moments of subtle question-raising and zoomed-in character study illuminate it. The film’s off-kilter cinematography and the leading ensemble’s unstable approaches electrify the geopolitical, racial, sexual, and authoritative nuances sprinkled throughout. Quinlan is also a phenomenal character to focus on, as his actions are fascinatingly contradictory yet unmissably human. Some satirical undertones are established to alleviate the overly self-serious nature of the script, strengthening the film’s power by shedding what plagues most of these kinds of movies: an ego. It may feel silly sometimes, but for the most part, it makes the grave bits all the more philosophical and impactful. Many transitions and scenes intended to establish an initial buildup, especially just before crucial moments occur, feel vaguely out of place or too fast to comprehend. They’re preceded and followed well, but Touch feels clunkier because of it. Nevertheless, Touch of Evil is fun, amusing, and thought-provoking, especially in this reconstructed version.

Screens in 35mm on Sat, 12/23, 1 pm, 3:30 pm, 6 pm and 8:30 pm @ Brattle.
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the film’s reconstructed version.