Strictly average movie

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

so this how American cops to solve a bank robbery? just took a driver who deliver flowers daily to a floral shop regularly on time, and roughed him up in the holding cell? then the frame guy was released, he later sought the buddy he saved in WWII, and that guy just so conveniently connected with the underworld and got the info for him to look up those guys who framed him? yeah, very convenient. his buddy gave him several bills and sent him off to Mexico to revenge his unfairly imprisonment. those little money seemed to be magically enough for him to call a taxi and drove him into Mexico and did some gambling in search of the guy suspected to link to the robbery group and the team leader, a retired u.s. cop who had planned said robbery. the money he got seemed to be never became short. then this guy arrived in another Mexico city via airplane (again, the limited fund never drained), and then he arrived at the rendezvous in another taxi with a beautiful classy lady who seemed to know him pretty well, and we viewers who had been teated like morons so far got to accept all these kinda crap and took them for granted? well, so far the movie already looked stupid and ridiculous enough. but the real problem other than the shady stupid screenplay was the leading actor, the scapegoat of this seeking justice stupid film. this guy simply could not act at all but only use his facial expressions to show what the screenplay asked for him to play. a very bad actor indeed. i just didn't have the patience to sit through the whole movie but had to force myself to watch along. don't know how other viewers would consider this film a great noir. this movie is so predictably stupid in every step and every way, yet it has been rated as high as over 7 out of 10. maybe most of the viewers could get inner appreciation of this film's confidentiality, but i sure don't have such merit and i.q. level.

This initially started out as a great movie. A basic bank-robbery/frame-up plot is punctuated with a bit of intrigue, as the robbers are anonymous to each other due to some creepy masks.Our hero's sense of desperation is fairly- accurately relayed throughout his beatings at the hands of the cops, loss of employment, and search for justice in Tijuana. The death scenes are pulled off fairly well, despite the complete lack of blood. (I get it: WWII just ended and soldiers didn't want to see any more carnage. However, it isn't as difficult to change a camera angle as it is to completely suspend one's sense of disbelief.)The movie starts to unravel as soon as our protagonist's love interest comes into the picture. Her acting ability is sub-par, and her dialog does little to endear her to the viewer. In fact, the suspense the film has produced up to this point is completely destroyed... and all for a poorly-interwoven romantic sub-plot. The gritty atmosphere is abandoned for a mediocre romantic angle that goes nowhere - and our hero's belle is nowhere near likable enough to develop the sub-plot to any degree worthy of the digression.As such, whereas I would have given the movie 8/10, it is reduced to 5/10.

A down-on-his-luck ex-GI.He finds himself framed for an armored car robbery.When he's finally released for lack of evidence--after having been beaten up and tortured by the police--he sets out to discover who set him up, and why. The trail leads him into Mexico and a web of hired killers and corrupt cops.Lots of recognizable character actors. The action is tight as a 22 year old and the story equally compelling.Well done, although the the available prints lack quality.

Everything's up to date in Kansas City, so a group of bank robbers in hooded masks get together to commit the biggest heist that the mid-west city (spread across two states) will ever see. Three of the robbers have no idea what the others look like, with only the mastermind aware of who is who, having basically blackmailed the others to get involved with promise of a large cut. They don't count on ex-con John Payne, a war hero and reformed felon, being arrested for an alleged involvement, only because he was near the scene of the crime in the same flower shop van that the others used as a get-away vehicle. After less than half an hour, the action switches to foreign locations where Payne begins his investigation as to how he got framed so he can clear this off of his record. After one of the men is killed, Payne assumes his identity, and tracks down the other men, including the mastermind (Preston Foster) and his beautiful daughter (Colleen Gray), where he is forced into the final showdown with investigators of the crime and a surprise is revealed that will alter the outcome of the original robbery.The performances of the four actual criminals are worth viewing for individual detailed characteristics, and Payne, a truly versatile actor, gives a nice dead-pan performance as he expresses an understandable world weariness, first from surviving a war, then from trying to turn his life around from crime. Gray plays more than just a walk-on love interest with no real purpose. Even if her screen time is limited, she brings a different dimension into the character of her father mastermind. Foster is outstanding, first in plotting the crime, then in bewilderment as he meets the intrusive Payne, and finally, as he faces his own conscience. Jack Elam, Neville Brand and Lee Van Cleef are worthy of note as the three men involved, while Don Orlando, in a brief role of a cab driver that Payne meets in Tijuana, is memorable as well. This well written film noir is another example of expressing the true meaning of "Crime Does Not Pay" and that in the end, the truth is always revealed.