Dead Reckoning

The shadow of World War II falls over this stateside film noir thriller about a GI paratrooper (Humphrey Bogart) who trails his AWOL war buddy to a treacherous city populated by gamblers, goons, pug cops, and the smoky, suspicious Lizabeth Scott, a seductive femme who may be fatale. Bogie's tight lipped, war hardened intensity dominates the B roster of supporting actors (Morris Carnovsky as a finicky nightclub owner with a gambling sideline, Marvin Miller as his brutal baby-faced thug) and the plot echoes with elements of earlier Bogie classics The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon recast on a low budget. Scott is, for all her fog-voiced sultriness, no Lauren Bacall, but her mannered performance is appropriately ambiguous and the film's cynical edge, ruthless desperation, and tarnished view of small-time hoodlums with big dreams casts a darker shadow unique to Hollywood's postwar funk. --Sean Axmaker