Robert Siodmak, who warmed up his film noir chops with Phantom Lady, hits his stride in this crime melodrama starring Burt Lancaster, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Dan Duryea. Lancaster plays a regular guy whose heart still belongs to his ex-wife Anna. His character, Steve, is a square-jawed type who doesn’t really appreciate anyone telling him what to do and doesn’t appreciate the fact that tight, white, tank top undershirts are supposed be worn underneath something.
We first meet Steve as he strolls into the local nightclub where he and his ex-wife use to hang out. She still hangs out there, it’s just that now she’s hanging out with and married to a hoodlum named Slim Dundee.
Steve and Slim get into a fight and we learn that the brawl wasn’t supposed to get as ugly as it did, but Slim shot his mouth of about this and that, and Steve being the steely-eyed hunk that he is took offense.
See, this fight was suppose to establish that Steve and Slim hated one another and that Slim was going off to Detroit that night. If the cops bought it, then the next day when Steve’s armored car is hijacked, no one will ever believe that it was Slim or that Steve had any involvement in it.
The next morning, it’s time to haul the very hefty payroll for some really big factory. They normally use a three man crew, but Steve’s plan calls for one of those guys to be gone. It gets rigged so that only Steve (the driver) and a 150 year old man named Pop (the old geezer who gets killed) are on the truck.
Pop has been around since the Crusades so he knows that when his bunions itch, it’s usually a good indicator that something isn’t quite right. As they drive off to make their delivery, Pop starts getting nervous and suggests they turn back. Steve stalls him and continues to drive.
You’re probably wondering how a good guy like Steve got himself into the armored car heist racket. Well, Steve’s glad you asked, because having an extended flashback is a good way to drown out the senile ravings of Pop.
It all started several months ago when Steve returned to L.A. He’d been married to Anna a while back and they broke up and got divorced and he left town to try and get her out of his system. After a couple of years he comes back home. A good portion of the middle part of the movie is then spent with Steve alternately trying to forget and trying to get back together with Anna.
Steve frequently engages in very noirish narrative voice over and drops classic tough guy dialogue about how it is with dames like Anna. He compares her to a piece of apple that gets caught between your teeth and then you use a piece of cellophane from your cigarette pack to try and get the piece of apple out and then the cellophane gets stuck too. I don’t eat fruit or smoke cigarettes so I really had no idea what he was talking about.
When Slim confronts Steve about his intentions towards his wife, Steve tells him there’s nothing between him and Anna and that he was just using her to get into contact with Slim. Steve wants to pull an armored car heist and he needs Slim and his crew to help him do it.
Slim hears this and immediately decides that it’s the truth and signs up for this heist. Everyone throws themselves into planning for the robbery and they seek out a old guy with a drinking problem to help them plan it.
The plan sounds like one the A-Team might have come up with in their prime or as B.A. might have said when they were “on the jazz.” (It involves an oil tanker blocking a bridge, an ice cream truck and a bunch of gas bombs.)
Steve is one of those doomed men who is the subject of so many noir thrillers. We know he’s doomed right from the beginning of the movie when he’s fighting mobsters and driving toward his appointment with destiny in the armored car.
In fact, as he’s driving, he realizes what is happening and the flashback that tells the story of what led up to him being in that situation can be likened to a dying man’s life flashing before his eyes.
In fact, in his headlong march to destruction, he seems to be resolute at accepting his fate. He tries nothing to change it. He’s warned by family and friends that Anna is no good for him, Slim tries to warn him to stay away, maybe even Anna tries to warn him by first divorcing him and then marrying Slim.
None of it matters though, because Steve’s destiny is inescapable once he returns to Los Angeles. He admits as much when he says he travelled all around, but just couldn’t get her out of his system. Like an addict returning for a fix that he knows will surely kill him, Steve seeks her out as soon as he gets back.
Director Siodmak fills the screen with his trademark German expressionism, with the shadows and nice camera shots (the aerial shot as the armored car enters the factory isn’t seen too much in movies like this) and the entire heist is played out like some nightmare out of World War One, with faceless men in gas masks moving through the fog shooting at anyone who moves.
Lancaster is a movie star here the way he fills the screen and commands every scene with his intensity while Duryea (who has little to do in the picture) looks right at home in another sleazy role. A muscular effort from all involved. Movies don’t come much more hard boiled than this.
© 2011 MonsterHunter
