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This one is made up of the following "sizzling ingredients." "Inflamed
passions, greed robbery and murder." Burt Lancaster is a an armored car driver
who still wants his ex-wife (Yvonne DeCarlo). She is married to a "notorious
hoodlum" named Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). Burt has a "tryst" with her and is
discovered by Dundee. To cover that up, Burt convinces him that he was only
seeing her to get to him so that he could help him with an armored car robbery.
Dundee believes him and it "ultimately lead[s] to violence and death." 1948, 98 minutes, VHS
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 (who else?). Burt plays a regular guy whose heart still belongs to his
ex-wife Anna. Anna is really Lily Munster, and I kept waiting for Herman to
lumber in and tell Burt to keep his paws off of her, but it never happened.
Anyway, Burt's 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 a guy by the name of Slim Dundee (why would any woman ever
date a guy name Slim?). Dundee is played by Dan Duryea, a veteran of these
types of movies. Slim is a questionable character, some would say a bit of a
hoodlum (the back of the box did) so he's surrounded by a gang of guys that
suck up to him and I guess hang around until Slim decides to pull a job or
something. This night, Slim is going to Detroit (the movie is set in El-Lay)
and is having a goodbye and good riddance party, so Steve decides that he ought
to do the decent thing and see Slim and his wife (Steve's ex-wife) off with a
good old fashioned brawl! Before he goes to the back room where all this
hoodlum celebrating is going on (knife fights, tough guy talk, pawing babes,
that kind of thing) he is accosted by his friend Lt. Pete Ramirez of the LAPD.
Lt. Pete tells Steve that Slim isn't worth it and don't start anything and that
whole sissy speech the squares and the five-o are always trying to give Steve
and me when we're looking to bust up a joint over a hussy who has strayed.
Steve gives him the brush off and heads on back to the private room to say
"sayanora" to Slim. The scene is great as the imposing figure of Lancaster
(man, that dude was pretty good sized!) stands in the front of the room and
stares at Slim, oblivious to the fact that there are like six of Slim's buddies
there with him. They send the women out and the scene shifts back to the rest
of the bar/nightclub where we promptly hear the crash of glass. Lt. Pete
creams himself as he runs in and finds a knife on the ground, thinking he's
finally got the goods on Slim. Of course, Steve refuses to press charges and
he and Slim go out back to wash up. There we learn that the fight isn't
exactly everything we were lead to believe. In fact, in professional wrestling
parlance, it was actually a work that turned into a shoot.  A work is a fight that is fake, rigged, pre-planned, etc. A shoot is a fight
that is unplanned and real. We learn from the boys in the back 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 lad that he is took offense. See,
this fight was suppose to further 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 right before the truck is supposed to
leave one of the guys gets a phone call that his wife is ill and he needs to go
home right away. He does so leaving only Steve (the driver) and a 150 year old
man named Pop (the old geezer who gets killed) 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 about the phone call 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. He says it's because
his mama needs help with the house (I can't do a think with this place! What
it really needs is armored car heist!), but everyone really knows it's because
he's never forgotten Anna. The first thing he does it get ready to call her,
but that stupid Lt. Pete interrupts things. Steve hangs out at the nightclub
they used to go to and spies her dancing on the dance floor. He watches her do
the Lambada or something then tries to set up a hook up, but it turns out in
his absence she has decided to hook up with the local mobster (Slim). Now,
everyone from Lt. Pete to Steve's mommy knows that Anna is no good for him, but
as you might well imagine, Steve sees a chance to rekindle what they once had.  A good portion of the middle part of the movie is spent with Steve trying to
forget and trying to rehook with Anna. She's going to go to the beach with,
then she's going to go get married to Slim. She complains that Slim beats her,
Steve gets wasted. She says that Lt. Pete has threatened to have her sent to
women's prison, Steve is still wasted. 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. Now, if had maybe talked about how sometimes those little
bits of popcorn gets slid under your bridgework and annoys you for about four
days,
then I may have been interested. At some point, Slim gets wise to Steve's
attentions that he is devoting to his woman and just shows up at Steve's mom's
house. First of all, I'm assuming that since he's about thirty and living
with his mom that this visit interrupted his viewing of Star Trek (original series of course!), but when you're getting all up on a mobster's
girlfriend (hasn't he seen any of Dan Duryea's previous film noirs?) then
you've got expect him to come a calling. So Slim's all like, what's with you
and
my girl hanging out at your place when your mommy's gone and the episode where
evil Kirk is trying to do something ornery to Uhura is in? And so Steve's
like, don't sweat it man, even though I live in my mom's house, I'm still
really cool and to prove it to you I've just come up with an ingenious way to
weasel out of this situation. Steve tells Slim 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.
He'll cut him in 50/50. I don't know about you, but when someone wants to know
what I'm doing with their broad, my first reaction isn't to spin some yarn
about how I just wanted to get the guy's attention so we could pull robberies
together. Slim hears this and immediately decides that it's the truth and
signs up for this heist (Hey it's a heist and he's a hoodlum, he couldn't not
do it!). Everyone throws themselves into planning for the robbery and they
seek out a old guy with a drinking problem to help them plan it (sounds
promising).  At first there is some reluctance to believe that this job can be pulled off.
Several of the crew recall a group that tried it in the past and they all ended
up bellying up to Old Sparky. Of course, the fact that they are going after
something like half a million bucks quickly allays any fears they have. Steve
assures everyone that it won't be any problemo because they got an inside guy
in Steve. 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." (We all know
what Hannibal Smith would've have said once it all worked out, don't we?). The
scheme involves an oil tanker blocking a bridge, an ice cream truck and a bunch
of gas bombs. Sounds likes this incident I had once at summer camp (those
records are sealed by the way). Now, we flash back to Steve driving the truck
(thanks for catching us up Steve!) and Pop is still as nervous as a whore in
church (That just isn't right!) and is spouting off about some black car
trailing them.
Eventually it passes and Steve notes that the oil tanker truck is on schedule.
They drive into the plant and Steve notices the Good Humor Man has arrived and
is ready to stick a popsicle up Pop's butt. I should note that Steve has
repeatedly told everyone that no shots are to be fired and that he doesn't want
Pop to get hurt. This obviously signs Pop's death certificate. That and the
fact that Pop brags about what a crack shot he is. You just know that Pop is
going to play it stupid and get his AARP arse shot off. Well, they get in
there and the plan shoots craps pretty fast. There's an explosion, smoke fills
the area, the bad guys don gas masks and Pop decides he's going to shoot
somebody. So he gets a cap busted in his ass and Steve notices and his temper
flares up and he gets himself shot in the arm. He survives and is hailed as a
hero and for saving half the payroll. He is tore up about Pop making his last
delivery, but quickly forgets when he is kidnapped by a crony of Slim's. Steve
bribes him to take him to where he told Anna to meet with him and when he shows
up Anna reveals her true colors by telling him that she was taking the money
and he was kind of a dummy if he thought they were going off together. Slim
shows up then, tipped off by the guy who took Steve's bribe (where's his
loyalty?). Anna tries to hide in Steve's arms as Slim shots and kills both of
them. Sirens wail in the back ground as Slim walks out the door, his eyes
widening and the film ending. I think at some point Steve comments in one of his pithy voice overs about the
role fate plays in his life. Steve is one of those doomed men that 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 where 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 life and its
inevitable path are set in stone 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. The tragedy of course is that
Steve isn't some kind of villain, he just wants to be with her. He isn't
greedy or any of the regular bad things that destroy a protagonist. He tells
her in the last scene that even though he was wounded, people died and they
ended up with a bunch of money, it didn't matter to him - he only wanted to be
with her. In fact, you can be pretty sure that he'd gladly give up all the
money to Slim if it meant that he could only be with Anna. What adds to the
tragedy is that this woman he's come home for, that he's killed for, cares so
little about him that she would leave him to Slim just so she could get the
money. This is kind of one of those, "you think you know somebody" routines
and it turns out she was playing him all along. She hasn't really completely
concealed her need for greed though, that's why she married Slim even though
he abuses her. In the end her greed kills them both as they dawdle at the
hideout arguing about whether Steve is going to play the sap or not (he is) and
this allows Slim to track them down and kill them. Right before he shoots
them, you can see the differences in Steve and Anna. She cares only for money
and personal gain, so she's frightened and hides in Steve's arms. Steve on the
other hand, knows he never had chance as soon as he set foot again in The Big
Nowhere and holds her as they die (he finally got what he wanted - for Anna to
need him). 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.
You can see that Lancaster is a movie star here the way he fills the screen and
commands every scene with his intensity and you get the idea that he's cut out
for bigger things, whereas Duryea (who has little to do in the picture) looks
right at home in another sleazy role. The movie is a muscular effort from all
involved, dominated by a young Lancaster's nuanced performance (he's a little
like Steve McQueen, the way he 's able to communicate with just his eyes) that
you
won't soon forget. They don't come much more hard boiled than this.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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