CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

AaronCapenBanner Vincent Sherman directed this thriller that stars Gordon MacRae as recuperating WWII veteran Bob Corey, who is visited in hospital by his friend and fellow war veteran Steve Connelly(played by Edmond O'Brian) with whom they plan on opening a ranch together. Weeks later, with no word from his friend, just released Bob,along with his fiancée nurse Julie Benson(played by Virginia Mayo) investigate, and discover that Steve had gotten mixed up with a gangster and his mistress. Not believing rumors that he was dead, he is determined to find the truth, which leads to several murders... Misfired noir starts off well, with a nice cast and atmosphere, but loses its way with too many flashbacks and a clichéd resolution, despite a fitting closing scene. A shame.

edwagreen Gordon MacRae in an actual totally non-singing role. He did well here as a veteran searching through the film for his war buddy Edmond O'Brien who seems to have gone missing as the Gordon character is supposed to be released from the hospital.Ironically, the femme fatale here is not Virginia Mayo but rather Viveca Lindfors, who delivers a quality performance. Ed Begley is his usual crusty self as the head of the police force and Dane Clark steals each scene he is in and as always is at his best in his insanity scene with those bulging eyes.When the bodies start to pile up, you think it's all related to gambling, but as always there is a girl involved and trouble ahead for those who fell for her.

dougdoepke No need to recap the plot. Those first few scenes in the hospital are charming, when not also spooky. The chemistry between Mayo and McRae is so infectious, I expected them to burst into song at any moment. But then there's that spectral visitation at the foot of McRae's bed. It's expertly staged, surpassing in impact anything else in the film.However, both the screenplay and the direction go downhill following this promising start. It's a complicated narrative whose alternating threads between flashback and real time are clumsily woven. At the same time, focal shifts between McRae and O'Brien further dislocate the viewer, (and why is Dane Clark given top billing with such limited screen time ).At the same time, director Sherman doesn't appear to have a feel for the material, filming in flat impersonal style despite noirish touches from cinematographer Guthrie. Good thing that fine actor Eddie O'Brien is on hand to carry the acting department. McRae is handsome and likable, but without the needed gravitas of crime drama, while the ravishing Lindfors's best scene is as the apparition.I like reviewer Brocksilvey's comments on the male-bonding aspects that I overlooked. In my experience, it's a very real part of military life and need have nothing to do with same sex attraction. Rather it has to do, I think, with the sharing of grueling experiences and the bonds thereby established, ones which can go deeper than more conventional types. Happily, the movie suggests the very sort of bonding Brocksilvey expresses.Anyway, in my view, the movie's a passable crime drama, but nothing more.

secondtake Backfire (1950)A complicated, interesting and sometimes forced story about two ex-G.I.s with dreams of a ranch. But the realities of post-War America set in, with shades of old gangsterism (this is a Warner Bros. film, remember) and with siren calls from lonely women and a murder unexplained. The story is made more complicated (and interesting) by layering a number of flashbacks into the flow, and you have to really pay attention to keep the chronology straight. But this is a plus, in the end, because it's a richly dense movie you could easily watch a second time. Just the range of scenes is ambitious, from gorgeous pouring rain at night to a boxing arena to a sunny army rehab swimming pool to, of course, a detective's office. The photography (under Carl Guthrie) layers up many scenes, some are visually sensational (he also shot the great "Caged" a few months later).Viveca Lindfors makes some stunning appearances here as Lysa, and you can see why Hollywood thought she might make a new Swedish import like Ingrid Bergman. And she can act, too, with an emotional intensity and range that makes you wonder why her career didn't, in fact, take off. Almost to set her off as the mysterious brooding beauty, the lead woman is the cute, cheerful, all American Virginia Mayo, who plays nurse and friend Julie perfectly. In a way you see in just these two how well cast, and typecast, two women can be, and how the director, Vincent Sherman, works so well with their differences, though we all wish for more of Lindfors.Likewise for the two leading men. The main star is a pretty boy, and a decent actor, Gordon MacRae as Bob, but MacRae lacks presence and magnetism, and maybe true ability. At first we accept this because Bob is just lying in a hospital bed, with Julie cheerfully attending. But then up he gets, pain all gone, and the real movie starts. His best friend is the underrated noir staple Edmond O'Brien, who isn't pretty at all, but trying, I think, to be something of a Bogart, a regular guy named Steve, with guts and depth and reserve. With Lindfors, he's still the best performer here, and they have a few scenes together that are the best acted, if not the best written, parts of the movie. If we take the Bergman/Bogart comparison out of "Casablanca" to an extreme here with Lindfors/O'Brien in "Backfire," we can see their scene by the piano as a kind of wartime flashback, shoehorned into the movie for no good reason except to say they must be fated to meet and fall in love. But this isn't easy when someone else already loves the girl, and that someone has a gun, and a warped mind.Why exactly this doesn't all come together is one of the mysteries of the movies, where there are so many pieces to a puzzle that contribute successively, and concurrently, and getting them perfect is really really hard. Ultimately it's the director we look to for the big decisions (as well as the day to day control), and Sherman had shown once before his mastery of a complex story in "Mr. Skeffington." In a way, this one is just so fractured, following the film noir penchant for flashbacks and femme fatales and confusing plots, it would take a miracle, or a Michael Curtiz, to pull it off (I'm thinking "Mildred Pierce" more than "Casablanca" here). Still, it's a great film to get lost in, and to pull out the subtleties where they really work well.