I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

Dreadfully Boring

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Three Strangers is directed by Jean Negulesco and written by John Huston and Howard Koch. It stars Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Music is by Adolph Deutsch and cinematography by Arthur Edeson.A tricky movie in structure as it constantly shifts between three character arcs to lead us to its resolution. Plot finds Crystal (Fitzgerald) luring Johnny (Lorre) and Arbutny (Greenstreet) to her apartment to make a wish in front of a Chinese idol known as Kwan Yin. It's believed that Kwan Yin will bring a wish true if requested by three strangers at midnight. They mutually agree on purchasing a lottery ticket and vow to split the winnings evenly. Naturally things don't go as planned…The key issue here is that the three characters are tainted by their weaknesses, so as greed, paranoia, bad luck and jealousy grips their respective lives, Kwan Yin deals them the cards they deserve. Negulesco and his writers give the actors meaty parts, thrusting the characters into a world of embezzlement, murder, imprisonment and alcoholism. The vagaries of fate shows its hand as well, and with Edeson's black and white photography cosying up to the thematics, pic rounds out as a thriller cum drama with added mysticism for good measure.Huston's noir shadings are evident, and since it was written before it, this makes for a good appetiser to The Maltese Falcon. Good fun to be had here and the final outcome for our three strangers doesn't disappoint either. 7.5/10

I read the back story on this film and how long they wanted to make it....Along with the top "A-list" stars they wanted for it and for the life of me...I can't see them in this. Who they chose was dead perfect.Two men follow a beautiful woman to her apartment but for her...it was by design. She shows the men a Chinese goddess of fortune and at a certain time of the the year, if 3 strangers all wish on it then it will come true. Peter Lorre plays an aloof crook who doesn't care if he gets caught or not. He's just chillin' the whole time through this. He decides that he has a lottery ticket for a horse race in his pocket and that they should wish on that to win. If they do it's 30,000 pounds to the winner. Split 3 ways that's 10,000 each. The real story is the stories of each of the 3 strangers lives outside that wish they made upon the Chinese goddess of fortune. Peter Lorre is a crook who's hiding out with one of his accomplices waiting for another crook to get out of jail. He's on trial for murder and they sit and wait for him to get free. Sydney Greenstreet is a sheister estate lawyer who funnels his clients funds into stocks and what not and he chooses a wrong stock and loses the money in the process. He needs this lottery ticket for a horse race to win. Geraldine Fitzgerald plays a shifty no-good wife of a prominent official who's in the marriage for all the wrong reasons. He's left her a long time previous but she wants to make up with her husband for all her wrongs but she only wants to so no other woman will have him. She knows he can't get a divorce without her consent so he's stuck and she pulls the strings. Problem is that she needs money and this ticket could help her out.This is a really winding story of 3 losers who if they would just do one thing right in their life then Karma would probably help them out. As it stands though, these are 3 people who deserve their fates because they created them. A really creative idea for a story and really well done. A great ending you see coming but it's still good any how. All 3 leads were cast perfectly for what this film has to offer. Give this one a shot and wait for the ending to see what Karma is all about.

Put together Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet and you've got me. Lorre is at his "I don't give a damn about anything" best. Greenstreet is the windbag know-it-all who dismisses everything that doesn't benefit him, but becomes the apotheosis of neediness when he starts to fail. Now you have a pact set up by a group of ne'er-do-wells, centering around a ticket for the Grand National. At the beginning they laugh about the pact because they realize the chances of winning are nil. Now we get to know them and their human failings: a drunk, an embezzler, and a self-possessed woman who set the whole thing up. Their exploits are woven together when the ticket is drawn. They each handle it in their own way and the conclusion is quite satisfying.

Three Strangers is not a typical Hollywood film. Dark and philosophical, it introduces the viewer to three people, strangers to one another, and then follows their sad, desperate lives. While one reviewer on this site says it's a shame they don't make movies like this anymore, the fact is, they almost never made movies like this back then. This is far less neat and more philosophical than your typical 40s flick, a movie about strange twists of fate and the ways in which people fail to take responsibility for their actions.The cast is excellent, with Peter Lorre particularly impressive in one of the best performances of his career as an alcoholic who thinks too much and does too little. I was also quite taken by Joan Lorring's touchingly vulnerable performance as a girl in with the wrong crowd.Admittedly the ending ties things up in a neat little bow, yet for the most part this movie is far closer in spirit to the indie movies of the 1990s than to the film noirs of the 1940s it could be mistaken for.