text: I was expecting "Born to Kill" to be an exciting, high-tension film noir. Instead, it's got two good action set-pieces (one at the beginning and one at the end) and some marvelously atmospheric cinematography by Robert de Grasse (usually a "glamor" cameraman and a surprising credit for a noir), but the rest of the film is pretty boring. Lawrence Tierney goes through his psycho kick but it's a strictly by-the-numbers performance, mechanically churning out what the audience expected from him after "Dillinger" (an overrated movie but at least better than this). Claire Trevor's character is too stupid and unmotivated to have any audience appeal, and the action (such as it is) stays so resolutely inside that damned house in San Francisco the film becomes claustrophobic instead of genuinely thrilling. It's one of those movies in which the supporting players -- notably Elisha Cook, Jr. (whose character's homoerotic itch for Tierney's is one of the few subtleties in an otherwise pretty obvious script) and Isabel Jewell -- out-act the leads. It also doesn't help that, nearly half a century after Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins revolutionized the depiction of psycho killers on the screen in "Psycho," Tierney's is so gross and obvious he might as well have "PSYCHO" tattooed on his forehead. Also, there's no indication in the film as it stands as to why the source novel was called "Deadlier than the Male" -- but perhaps James Gunn made the female characters stronger and more interesting than they are in the film. "Born to Kill" is a real disappointment from Robert Wise, who already had some quality movies under his belt and would go on to a stellar career.