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“You'd like to have my organization, my influence, my fix. You can't, it's impossible. You think it's money. It's not. It's personality. You haven't got it. You're a cop. Slow. Steady. Intelligent. With a bad temper and a gun under your arm. With a big yen for a girl you can't have. First is first and second is nobody.” So speaks Mr. Brown, the mob boss in The Big Combo, a lesser known, though no less illuminating example of film noir that is the focus of Dan Geist’s masterful and spirited critique of the critics who have built their careers on misunderstanding film noir. Dan Geist is a New York-based arts critic and editor. He is the editor of Teheran Bureau, a PBS-affiliated Iran media initiative. He has written for Knight Ridder, Inter Press Service, and the Wall Street Journal. He is an alumnus of Amherst College.