Such a frustrating disappointment

Great Film overall

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I like Glenn Ford and he does a good act for whatever role he is assigned. Here he plays a guy just trying to get a break which really means a job and he runs into this story. Interesting to note the scene where there is a courtroom procedure and how inadequate justice was and how it was dispensed. It helps you to realize how we got to where we are today as people in court rooms know not what they do and the powers that be don't care either. The plot involves money, love, betrayal and hope all the emotional traits humans suffer from and need. The problem is that all the wrong stuff is too available while the better opportunities take time, patience and some discernment. The ending is satisfying and one can relate to it no problem. You never know what to expect with film noir but you always get atmosphere, intrigue and down to earth surprises. Recommend a snack and a tasty drink to compliment the viewing

FRAMED starts out with a bang, with Glenn Ford trying to steer a speeding truck with no brakes to its destination, but gradually it started to lose me as it sped along into increasingly illogical plot turns. Janis Carter plays the least appealing femme fatale I've ever seen in a film noir. (In any lineup of great ladies of film noir, her name has never come up.) Here she's plotting with her lover, a married banker (Barry Sullivan), to fake his death, retrieve the money he's embezzled, and head off to happier climes. But they need a patsy with no ties to substitute for the banker. And that's where Ford, a mining engineer looking for work, comes in. We're supposed to believe Ms. Carter can entice Ford, but he never displays anything but rank hostility in her presence. When he finally kisses her, it's more of a physical assault than an act of lust. When it comes to carrying out the death-faking part, they enact a scene straight out of DOUBLE INDEMNITY. The plan they adopt is so poorly thought out that even the most cursory police investigation would see through it. Ford at least is punchy and irritable throughout, a side of him I've never quite seen before. He glares with the best of them and passes out drunk a couple of times. He's nice to Edgar Buchanan, though. And who wouldn't be? As silly as the proceedings get, it's never too predictable and moves at a fast clip throughout. This is low-end film noir, a far cry from James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, but still worth recording off TCM and watching once. Barry Sullivan (whose centennial is tomorrow, August 29) plays a solid citizen with a corrupt core, a long way from the rugged western heroes he'd portray ten years later (e.g. FORTY GUNS), but closer to the antagonists he'd specialize in playing on TV dramas in the 1960s and '70s.

***SPOILERS*** It was a desperate looking for a job and out of work mining engineer Mike Lambert's, Glenn Ford, great misfortune in being spotted at a local bar by blond sexy waitress Paula Craig, Janie Carter, as he was gulping down his troubles. Paula together with her boyfriend bank vice president Steve Price, Barry Sullivan, have been planning to embezzle the bank that Steven works in for $250,000.00 and all they needed was a fall-guy or pasty to make their plan complete. And it was the luckless Mike Lambert who fit the bill perfectly.Lambert for his part gets somewhat lucky by later landing a job with local silver prospector Jeff Cunningham, Edger Buchanan, who's struck a mother load of the white and shiny stuff and needs an experience's mining engineer to help him work it off. At an estimated yield of some 140 ounces of silver per ton that would make both Cunningham & Lambert ,who's been offered not only a job but 10% of the profits, very rich. The big problem in all that is that it would screw up the plans that both Janis & Steven have for Lambert as being a fall-guy in their plan in that his disappearance would not go unnoticed! With a nobody and friendless Lambert disappearing off the face of the earth which the two's sinister plan calls for!With Steven's bank the only bank in town it's easy for him to deny the never deflating or being late in a payment on a loan Cunningham a loan to buy his mining equipment. With Lambert's job with Cunningham no longer there it makes it easier for Janis & Steven to get him into position to take the fall in the robbery that they both planned. The fall would be in Lambert getting killed in a car crash with Lambert drunk and behind the wheel and burnt to a crisps where he'll be suspected to be Steven Price the guy who robbed his own bank!****SPOILERS*** It when Janis falls in love with the person that both she and Steven are setting up that things start to unravel for the both of them. That's with Steven the person who's supposed to be killed in a car crash ending up unknowingly taking Lambert's place. That while a dead drunk and out of it Lambert when he finally sobered up thinking that he in fact killed him! What's even worse is that Lambert's friend Cunningham is the person framed in Price's murder when it's discovered by the police that his car accident was no accident at all! It's now up to Lambert to pick up all the pieces in this bizarre puzzle and put them together to get to the bottom to who was behind Steven Prices murder. Not realizing that it's the person closes to him Paula Craig who in fact did him in. And even worse had Cunningham a totally innocent man not only take the rap for his murder but possibly end up paying for it with his very life.It was Lambert's going out of his way to save Cunningham from being framed by Janis that turned the tables on her without him even knowing it. Being the one slated to be murdered by Janis & Steven Lambert in a way felt responsibly to get those who attempted to murder him to face justice. The fact that he survived due to Janis falling in love with him made it also possible for Lambert to prevent his friend Cunningham from taking the fall for Janis' crime that both she and her now dead partner in crime Steven Price unknowingly,by rejecting him a loan and getting Cunningham all heated up and threatening, framed him for.

Film noir was Janis Carter, Glenn Ford and Barry Sullivan in the midst of quite an interesting story.Miserable with his wife, played by Karen Morley, Sullivan, a bank Vice President, has an affair with Carter and the 2 plot the demise of a victim, similar in built to Sullivan so that they can abscond with lots of money.Glenn Ford, a miner, becomes their target, but fate intervenes and Carter falls for Lambert (Ford) instead so she bumps off Sullivan.Old prospector, Edgar Buchanan, gets blamed as he had threatened Sullivan when the latter turned down his request for a loan.The twists and turns makes this an interesting film. The only problem here is the rush act that the picture made to end after 1 hour and 24 minutes.