Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Deadline at Dawn has a Trojan Horse of a protagonist. After a brief prologue, we start the film with Al, a young, square-jawed and impeccably decent sailor on shore leave who proceeds to get himself tangled up in a web of murder and blackmail. The usual, basically. To be honest, this guy's naive to the point of stretching credulity and Bill Williams' performance does little to add layers or nuance to this very broad character. Somewhere along the way though, there's a hand-off that occurs, with Susan Hayward's more streetwise dancehall girl taking precedence. Her character, along with a philosophical cabbie (played by Paul Lukas) are clear standouts here and make for a good, if not quite classic, film noir as they're put through their paces by a twistier-than-average script.Bottom line: Fans of film noir should find a lot to interest them here.

Bill Williams plays Alex Winkley, a sailor on leave who awakens from a drunken blackout to find a large sum of money on his person, which he believes belongs to a young woman named Edna(played by Lola Lane) whom he had helped the night before. Sadly, he finds her dead, and is unsure if he's guilty or not, but is helped by a dance hall girl(played by Susan Hayward) and a friendly taxi driver(played by Paul Lukas) to solve the mystery, which has many suspects, and he only has four more hours until he has to report back to his ship, or be AWOL. OK film noir has likable performances which compensate for the complicated mystery which ends up having a semi-surprising resolution.

Terrifically gritty noir. Susan, still a B actress at the time took a big step forward with this little gem, one of the great overlooked noirs. She's tough and no nonsense but caring. She also looks phenomenal considering she had given birth to twin boys just before making this. Bill Williams is just right as the naive gob and Paul Lukas adds great support as a cabbie who lends a helping hand. The film is also full of wonderful touches, Susan's snappy no-nonsense talk, the incidental characters the leads come across and the sets and set-ups of the shots with intriguing little details just randomly placed in the background. Well worth seeking out.

The police have no qualms about knocking on someone's door just before dawn cracks in this post-war film noir which uses temporary amnesia to make a sailor (Bill Williams) wonder if he killed a nasty blackmailer (Lola Lane, far from the nice swinging on gates gal of "Four Daughters"). An exhausted taxi dancer (Susan Hayward) is perky enough after fighting off a masher to invite Williams over for corned beef, and gets more than he bargained for.It turns out that the victim was nastier than Williams thought, and with the help of a cab driver (Paul Lukas), the trio begins their own investigation, which must turn up a killer by 6 AM when Williams is scheduled to catch a bus back to his base. This fast-moving entry in the new genre of darkly lit crime dramas popular after 1944 features interesting characters, a gritty use of New York City nightlife and sleaze, but some of the details just don't seem right. Yet, there are various comments about late life in New York that seem to ring true today. All of the actors are fine, both sleazy and decent, and the film is overall a lot of fun to watch. Certain aspects of the screenplay seem far-fetched, and the conclusion also seems a bit forced, as well as predictable.