Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

zardoz-13 "Johnny One-Eye" director Robert Florey's crime thriller "The Crooked Way," starring John Payne and Sonny Tufts, qualifies as an above-average example of film noir, distinguished in part by "He Walked by Night" lenser John Alton and his atmospheric black & white cinematography. Alton endows this tense, but derivative law and order saga with an ominous sense of foreboding. Ostensibly based on Robert Monroe's radio play "No Blade Too Sharp," "Back to Bataan" scenarist Richard H. Landau has taken the narrative convention about a protagonist that suffers from amnesia to the next level. Most films about amnesiacs allow them to recover their memory long before fade-out. For example, co-writer & director Joseph L. Mankiewicz earlier made "Somewhere in the Night," about a GI with amnesia who comes home and finds himself tangled up in a plot to recover Nazi gold. To my knowledge, I don't think Hollywood has made another movie roughly like Florey's "The Crooked Way." The biggest problem with this movie is that the hero remains passive for far too long. Meanwhile, his chief nemesis is well played by Sonny Turfs. The action transpires in bars, night clubs, the back rooms of gambling joints, and occasionally in a warehouse. The cops believe the worst about our hero and he finds himself predictably up to his neck in trouble. One thing different about the hero is his ability to shoot at and generally hit and kill his adversaries. As one thug observes after Eddie Rice has plugged a henchman: "He shot him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner." The character that heroic John Payne portrays differs from the usual amnesiac. Most amnesiacs struggle with psychological amnesia. Meaning, they will eventually recover their memories. Eddie Rice (John Payne of "Kansas City Confidential"), a.k.a. Eddie Riccardi, marched off to join the ranks for the Army in World War II and then spent five years in a psychiatric hospital because he had been wounded and had forgotten just about everything about himself. During combat, Eddie survived a devastating shrapnel wound. Army doctors removed most of the fragments, but they left one behind. Per the doctors, an operation to eliminate the last piece of shrapnel might place Eddie's life in jeopardy. You see, that piece of shrapnel in Eddie's head had generated thick scar tissue around it. Reluctantly, they allowed Eddie to leave the hospital and go back to his hometown of Los Angeles. The problem is that Eddie knows very little about himself, and Army Intelligence has not been able to dig up much more beyond what they know. No sooner has Eddie arrived in his old stomping ground of Los Angeles than a tenacious cop, Police Lieutenant Joe Williams (Rhys Williams of "The Sons of Katie Elder"), hauls our hero into headquarters and gives him the third degree. Eddie looks at a rap sheet and sees that his real name is Eddie Riccardi, but this knowledge doesn't change anything for him. Indeed, he is incredulous that he was a criminal. Williams is dubious about Eddie's claim that he received a Silver Star and has been hospitalized for war wounds. Lieutenant Williams recommends that Eddie leave town. Our hero, however, doesn't have a chance to get out of town before a homicidal mobster, Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts of "The Seven Year Itch"), learns about his presence and pays him an unpleasant visit. It seems that Vince and Eddie had once been partners, and Eddie blew town and Vince wound up taking the rap and spend some time behind bars. Detective Williams visits Vince after one of the lieutenant's stooge pigeons, Kelly (John Harmon), turns up murdered. Williams grilles Vince, and Vince shoots him. When the villains locate Eddie, they slug him unconscious and put his fingerprints all over the pistol that Vince used to kill Eddie. Eddie has just enough time to get out of the car parked on the side of the road and contains Detective Williams. He hitches a ride in an undertaker's van, and the police track him down to a warehouse where Eddie has knocked off two of Vince's henchmen and is facing down Vince. The police arrive and riddle Vince with a wave of gunfire.John Payne delivers an appropriately tight-lipped performance as the sympathetic but strong protagonist. The problem is that he is a passive rather than an active hero. The authorities and criminals keep pushing him around until he takes charge in the last quarter hour of the action. One thing that is done extremely well is Eddie Rice's superb marksmanship. He doesn't miss his targets. Williams is perfect as a driven police detective who thinks everything about Eddie stinks. Sonny Tufts is good as Eddie's chief nemesis. One of Vince's flaws is that he uses a drug to control nervousness that gives him away as the real dastard. Although the premise is good, the plot is straight-forward and predictable, but director Florey handles the action with competence.

evanston_dad Robert Osborne introduced "The Crooked Way" on TCM as nothing special when it was first released but a particular favorite of film noir fans now. I count myself as one of those fans, but have to admit that I'm a bit perplexed as to what it is about this film that would cause it to stand out from any number of other perfectly serviceable films like it. The deep-shadow photography courtesy of John Alcott was another of the film's attributes pointed out specifically by Osborne, and it is indeed probably its best asset. As for the rest, it's standard-issue noir with John Payne in one of his tough-guy roles. Granted, standard-issue noir is fine with me, but there are countless other noirs I've liked more than this one.Grade: B

Alex da Silva John Payne (Eddie) has left the army with a piece of shrapnel in his brain that has given him amnesia. He returns to LA to see if he can remember the life that he led prior to joining the army but he is warned to leave town by Lieutenant Rhys Williams (Joe) when he is spotted on arrival. He meets up with Ellen Drew (Nina) who betrays his whereabouts to gangster Sonny Tufts (Vince) and a couple of his henchman who also get to Payne, give him a pasting, and give him 24 hours to get out of town. At this point, you'd think he'd leave. Well, he doesn't.The film reminded me of "Somewhere In The Night" from 1946 starring John Hodiak. Both films are similar in that they tackle the topic of an amnesiac going back to his home town to try and discover his past life. Both films are time-passers but not any more than that. In this effort, I found that I never really cared what happened to our leading man and felt nothing when he was beaten up or shot. The rest of the cast aren't particularly enthralling with Sonny Tufts and his henchmen as the standout characters. The plot is stupid in that Payne doesn't leave town when he should but it's not as stupid as the storyline for "Somewhere In The Night".The story has no real surprises and starts to drag towards the end, especially when small time crook Percy Helton (Petey) gets involved. This isn't giving the plot away because it is so obvious that this is going to happen, but when Percy gets shot, both my wife and I simultaneously cheered. His character seems to be pronounced "Peedy" but "Paedy" would be more appropriate given his look. He is involved in a very corny ending.Amnesia must be contagious. I only watched the film yesterday and already the signs are there. It's OK to watch once but I wouldn't recommend it.

oldblackandwhite In the series of tough crime melodramas he made during the late 1940's and early 1950's John Payne invariably seems to be looking for something. In Kansas City Confidential (1952) it was the stolen loot from a robbery. In 99 River Street (1953) it was the thug who framed him for murder. In The Crooked Way (1949) it was something much more basic -- his very identity.Payne plays Eddie Rice, a WW II veteran recovered from the physical effects of a head wound but suffering a complete and permanent amnesia. He has no memory of his life before regaining consciousness in a hospital. All he knows about himself is what the Army has told him, that he enlisted in Los Angeles. When discharged from the hospital, he takes a train to L. A. to try and find out who he is. What he finds is more than he really wanted to know! That he was a hoodlum named Eddie Riccardi. That he has a wife (Ellen Drew), but she now hates his guts. That his former gangster partner, played with evil oozing from every pore by Sonny Tufts, is bent on beating him up, framing him for murder, and even more nasty things.How Eddie muddles though this dark nightmare of a past coming back to haunt him and how it is presented by director Robery Florey and cinematographer John Alton adds up to a classic forgotten gem of a noir thriller. The Crooked Way exhibits the classic elements of film noir -- a morally ambiguous protagonist, a femme fa-tale, a grim, brutal story, and the most starkly shadowed and obliquely angled cinematography found in any movie. Most of the scenes are at night, and Alton's camera throws a tenebrist gloom over every shot with only the speaker's face lighted. Sometimes all figures are silhouettes, then the face gradually comes to light. A tall man looks down at a short man, and the view is as from a second story window. All this dark, oblique cinematography is not only arty and thrilling on its on to noir groupies, but it works perfectly to portray the dream-like state Eddie is experiencing. The story moves along briskly under Florey's direction and Frank Sullivan's editing. The action is explosively sharp and brutal.John Payne was perfectly cast in the part of Eddie, maintaining a blank, confused expression you would expect from an amnesiac, even when getting tough. Getting tough was an item that John Payne, an ex-boxer and a WWII veteran in real life, was good at in spite of his mild, laid back manner. He was at this point starting to mature as a tough guy actor after abandoning his original song and dance career at least in part because he got too weathered and muscled up. Payne seems to be an acquired taste amongst present day lovers of classic movies, but I've acquired it and am now looking for all of his pictures.The Crooked Way, while a cut below Kansas City Confidential and 99 River Street, is one of John Payne's best.