Rob Mathes

I am an Eddie Muller groupie and so I normally take his word on everything. He loves this film and there are a great many things in it to love. The hospital scene late in the film that prefigures The Godfather. The fantastic character actors in the secondary roles. Dan Duryea doing what Dan Duryea does!! Alan Napier planning the heist. All that said….there are two major plot holes you could drive a truck through and while I am always able to meet noir B-pictures halfway when they fall short because of budget and technical perfection, in a world of films like The Set-Up and Act of Violence, truly great noirs whose scripts are perfection itself, sloppy and silly plot holes just ruin it for me. Eddie loves Yvonne DeCarlo too and I just think there is something missing in her characterization. There was never a more beautiful woman, and she has strength and pizazz to a certain extent, but this isn’t a patch on The Killers or Double Indemnity. In my opinion it isn’t in the same class. Very disappointing.