Directed By ~ John Cromwell
Starring ~ Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott
With ~ Morris Carnovsky, Charles Cane,
William Prince, Marvin Miller, Wallace Ford, James Bell, George
Chandler, William Forrest, Ruby Dandridge
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Take "The Big Sleep", "The Maltese Falcon", "Murder My Sweet", "Double Indemnity" and a couple of other "Film Noir" classics, pour into a large bowl and blend well, bake in oven for 100 minutes, and what have you got? Dead Reckoning.... Yes folks, they're all here. But that doesn't mean it's a bad movie.
Bogie's old army buddy, who's been accused of murder, goes missing and eventually turns up burned to a crisp in a car wreck. Bogie figures it was murder and decides to find the killer. Along the way he runs into the usual batch of shady characters, the "femme fatale", the "mob boss", the "maniac killer" and so on. The bad guys conk him on the head, drug him, beat him up, shoot him and try to frame him for murder. However, all this doesn't slow Bogie down too much because the bad guys all end up dead or in jail.
This film was a box office flop and I'm not quite sure why. It does have a familiar feel to it mostly due to the fact that it is so similar to a lot of the "Film Noir" movies that were released around the same time. The acting is good with plenty of plot twists and it does keep you guessing right to the end.
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