Roadblock

This RKO film noir about a straight insurance investigator (Dick Tracy look-alike, Charles McGraw) who falls heavily for a dame who likes mink (Joan Dixon, who made a handful of B grades in the early '50s before disappearing from the movies) is a punchy variant on the template, but at 73 minutes suffers from a too rapid exposition of the plot. The relationship between the two principals, with its central conceit of the destruction of McGraw's character's moral fibre at the hands of a femme fatale is devoid of any psychological dynamic, and if the film starts well enough it is unable to sustain its impetus. This is one picture that deserves a remake.

FYI: Veteran cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca who began his career in the silent era worked on many similar crime movies during the 40s and 50s including Out Of The Past (1947) and Born To Be Bad (1950) but his work is best known from Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (1942).

 

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