News > C. Affleck, R. Scott Go Noir in "The Kind One"

Back in the 1930s and 40s, Warner Brothers was the studio for gangster pictures and its successor, film noir. WB put out "The Maltese Falcon," "White Heat," "The Big Sleep" and now, sixty years later, it goes back to its roots with "The Kind One," a period noir directed by Ridley Scott. According to Variety, the story, written first as a novel by Tom Epperson, "centers on an amnesiac who finds himself working for a mobster – a killer given the nickname "the Kind One" – and falling in love with the thug's girlfriend."

Casey Affleck will play the amnesiac against the backdrop of 1930s Los Angeles and Epperson is writing the screenplay. Ridley Scott and Jules Daly are producing for Scott Free and Ideaology's Sean Bailey ("Gone Baby Gone") is also producing. Daly mentions that what drew Ridley to the material was that he had never "touched this world before," but when you think about it, quite a few of his films have had noirish aspects to them. "Blade Runner" concerns a hard boiled cop weaving through a dark and smoky cityscape. "American Gangster" followed a similar structure to "Little Caesar" or "Scarface" (thug works his way up from nothing, becomes big man, falls). Even "Thelma and Louise" with its outlaws-on-the-run plot recalls "High Sierra" or "Gun Crazy." In a nutshell: Jules Daly is wrong, but I'm excited that she's making this movie with Scott and Affleck.

-David Morgan