Walk a Crooked Mile (1948)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Simply A Masterpiece

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Agents O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Grayson (Louis Hayward) are investigating how nuclear secrets could have gotten out of the country and into the hands of evil Commies. Being that they ARE evil, the enemy will stop at nothing...including beating and shooting women...in order to destroy freedom and America. Are the pair smart enough and tough enough to win?What I liked most about this film noir picture is that it is unflinching and brutal for 1948. It's a very tough picture and really delivers for lovers of the genre. My only complaint is the use of a terrible cliche near the end of the picture. Agent O'Hara figures finally out who is passing on the secrets to the Russians but instead of telling everyone immediately over the phone, he tells them he'll meet them and tell them. You just KNOW that means that the enemy will then try to kill him before he has a chance to tell...an obvious plot device to say the least. Still, apart from that it's NOT cliched and well written.

The bland narration and flag waving don't take up too much time but get the film off to a bland start and wrap things up with equal blandness. Inbetween the equally bland resolution and set up, director Gordon Douglas unleashes some nasty violence, an agent is shot in the heat right on screen, you see the blood spot hit his head, a nasty dead body here and there later on one scene obviously trimmed down of a dying man spitting blood out of his mouth. Unfortunately the 91 minutes pass pretty slowly in the, now boring, G man procedural details of how a recording device or a one way mirror works. Not the film's fault at the time but a dated dull element now. The one thing the film does do a decent job of is trying to keep you guessing about who the real spy is. Though you don't know unfortunately it's hard to care. Again time has removed the background needed. That background being that "RED" agents did steal the secrets of the Atomic Bomb and stole America's control of Atomic weapons. That was a big deal and helped kick off wild "red" fears. There were a number of "red scare" movies, this one holds up as credible and well made, but there isn't enough real drama or characterization in the writing to give it any real personality or interest, the good guys are pretty dully drawn and only competently acted. One scene stands out with a land lady that has both flag waving and some real drama to it. That, and the few moments of still somewhat shocking violence, still work. The rest is pretty dull. Well done but without enough flair to overcome being pretty forgettable. Lack of a music score help add to the leaden feel.

Well-made political thriller. 1948 is the year Hollywood joined the anti-communist crusade, and there's no mistaking the bad guys-- Raymond Burr in a Lenin-like goatee, a sinister gathering of "comrades", and Hollywood's version of commie rhetoric about how the individual doesn't matter in the global scheme of things. Up to that point, the studios had been turning out generally pro-Soviet films in behalf of our WWII allies. But now, turning on a dime, we find out what perfidious characters we had been supporting. Oh well, as they say, in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.Square-jawed Dennis O'Keefe makes for a dogged and intrepid FBI agent aided by Scotland Yard loan-out Louis Hayward. Together, they show what sterling fellows the English-speaking world turns out. They're on the trail of a covert Soviet spy sneaking out secrets from what is likely a bomb designing laboratory, though it's never specified. The plot rather prophetically anticipates the Klaus Fuchs affair of 1949, when the German-born spy was exposed as smuggling A-bomb secrets to the Soviets as early as 1945. The suspense revolves around who the lab spy is and how he's getting the secrets out. It makes for entertaining, if workman-like, viewing. The familiar narrator Reed Hadley lends stentorian authority, along with some fine location photography. Together they impart a sense of reality to what are otherwise standard stereotypes and a melodramatic plot. Sure it's Hollywood's manipulative brand of political cinema, this time turned on our former friends. But at least it's watchable, minus the kind of cold-war hysteria that came to characterize other efforts of the period. All in all, an interesting and revealing reflection of its time.

WALK A CROOKED MILE is the sort of brisk, documentary style espionage yarn so often made during the '40s, using narration to tell the story of two espionage agents (DENNIS O'KEEFE and LOUIS HAYWARD) assigned to track down whomever is responsible for leaking top secret information developed at a nuclear plant in California.Most of the action takes place in San Francisco, where O'Keefe and Hayward discover that an artist (ONSLOW STEVENS) is putting coded information beneath his paintings when he receives it from a spy working for the government agency. The story traces how the spy ring operates and it is these details that give the film added interest before the spies are caught. All of the methods must seem dated by today's standards of F.B.I. work, but the manner of presentation is gripping and the clever cat-and-mouse game that is played between the agents and the spies is credible and fascinating.It's smoothly directed by Gordon Douglas at a fast clip. RAYMOND BURR has his usual "bad guy" role as one of he spies, and LOUISE ALLBRITTON, CARL ESMOND, ART BAKER and CHARLES EVANS all make interesting suspects in the mystery behind the identity of the key traitor.Well worth viewing.