In Ace in the Hole aesthetics would have been served by intelligence.

| Jan 22, 2024

A fairly clear-cut moral parable...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 14, 2024

Wilder and company offer up a biting exploration of unscrupulous predatory journalism and the insensitive lust to get ahead and be on top.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 19, 2022

Today, Ace in the Hole represents an artistic zenith in Wilder's career, where his skill as a filmmaker and thorough condemnation of the human race converge into biting social commentary that stands apart from his more commonly known hits.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

Ace in the Hole is a dizzily exciting blend of the elements that go into maddog journalism.

| Aug 20, 2021

Surprisingly bleak, perversely funny, and undoubtedly impressive, if you haven't yet had the chance to catch Wilder's classic Ace in the Hole, it's high time to catch up with this supremely prescient title.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 4, 2020

Ace in the Hole does for print media what Network and Nightcrawler would do later on for television and it still rings true today.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 15, 2020

...a slow-moving yet progressively absorbing drama...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 20, 2020

It is actor Kirk Douglas's ultimate performance as a post-WWII heel, twisting the actor's considerable talent and the force of his charisma into a spectacle of contempt.

| May 13, 2020

...deserves another look in an age where people take a more cynical view of the press and may share the acerbic views of Wilder's eerily resonant film.

| Feb 13, 2020

A harsh, violent but vastly engrossing melodrama.

| Oct 30, 2019

Ace in the Hole (1951) is director/co-writer Billy Wilder's uncompromising, dark and harsh noirish commentary about human nature, and the unscrupulous and self-serving actions of compromised tabloid-media journalists.

| Original Score: A+ | Sep 27, 2019

Ace in the Hole is as vicious and irreverent as classic Hollywood ever got, bowing to nobody in its righteous cynicism.

| Apr 15, 2019

In a lesser movie, Tatum would share our sympathy for the pathetic man. Here, he's on a parabola in that direction but wants it to intersect with the moment of his own greatest fame.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 22, 2019

One hell of a whip-smart entertainment, sardonic and sad and always with the wisecracks.

| Original Score: A+ | Oct 1, 2015

Billy Wilder followed up Sunset Boulevard with this biting tale which cast a skeptical eye on the media and feels just as apropos in our age of 24-hour news.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 8, 2014

Ace in the Hole is a revelation, as timely now as when it was made.

| Aug 29, 2014

It's the most scabrous, uncompromised work from Billy Wilder, who never made a movie that wasn't kind of an asshole.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 27, 2014

Over 60 years later, Ace in the Hole has lost none of its sharpness. The only thing that's hard to believe about the movie is that Wilder and his co-screenwriters could have been this far ahead of the curve in their criticism of the media.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 10, 2014

One year after scandalizing Hollywood with his bilious classic Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder was up to his old tricks with Ace in the Hole, which did to journalism -- and to the average American -- what his previous picture had done to Tinseltown.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 13, 2014