All of the elements for a great film noir are here: the ex-con returning home, his ex-wife married to a criminal, the criminal bordering on the psychotic, and an elaborate plot to use a bank robbery as a ticket to freedom. It could have been great, but the screenplay lacked the zing that made such films as The Big Sleep or The Killers stand out. It ends up being a workmanlike B-movie that works as well as it does because of some great acting by Burt Lancaster.

As it is, the film is an entertaining yarn that pits Lancaster in his best stupid-tough-guy mode against the love of his life, the beautiful Yvonne De Carlo, and her new lover, the comical hood Dan Duryea. Thompson (Lancaster) returns to Los Angeles after an extended absence. He is a complete sap who chooses to blame his life's problems on fate (like many films noir, fate plays a strong role in this one, but Lancaster's character confuses his own inability to make a single good decision as the hand of fate, when he's really just a chump).

He immediately goes after his ex-wife Anna (De Carlo), not really because he wants her back, but because he doesn't want her to date Slim, the crook played by Dan Duryea. When he and De Carlo are caught together by Duryea, he explains that he was pitching a robbery to her, and he wants Duryea to help out. They are going to rob the armored car company that Lancaster managed to get a job at (this is before criminal background checks). Duryea goes along with it, as does De Carlo, but we all know that things aren't going to work out for our hero.

Basically, Lancaster is a complete loser, but he chooses to see his life as the actions of a higher power that doesn't like him. This is a strong element in many films noir, those post-WWII films where men were men and women couldn't be trusted. Director Robert Siodmak's The Killers is a much better film featuring many of the same elements, better because it is aided by a screenplay that has a taste for language. The dialog in this one is simply there to advance the plot, which it does. But if I can get more from my movies, I prefer more than simply adequate dialog.

This one was remade in 1994 by Steven Soderburgh as The Underneath, which was basically pointless except for some good editing and a genuinely frightening performance by William Fitchner in Duryea's role as the jilted criminal.