Don Siegel directed this little gem starring Robert Mitchum as Lt. Duke Halliday, a man who, at the beginning of the film is accosted by someone named Capt. Vincent Blake (William Bendix) who attempts to arrest him for theft.
Halliday knocks out Blake and escapes with a suitcase full of money and runs into a beautiful woman named Joan Graham (Jane Greer). The two keep running into each other with somewhat comical results and great banter back and fourth.
Graham's fiancee, Jim Fiske (Partick Knowles) is involved in a huge robbery and she works with Halliday to stop it. This film is actually a cross country car chase with romance and comedy thrown in the noir mix and it works quite well.
Siegel handles the directing chores very well of course and one can easily see where his career was headed, and the rest is history. The film moves along at a very brisk pace and never lets up for 72 minutes.
Mitchum had just been busted for drugs before this was filmed and most actresses didn't want to work around him, but Greer was a personal friend and took the role which a good thing because they work very well together which they would do again in the film noir classic "Out Of The Past" a couple of years later.
A different look at the film noir genre that every fan should see. The rest of the cast includes Ramon Novarro, Don Alvarado and John Qualen. Check it out.
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