Kansas City Confidential (Phil Karlson, 1952)

John Payne and Lee Van Cleef in Kansas City Confidential

Cast: John Payne, Coleen Gray, Preston Foster, Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam, Dona Drake, Mario Siletti, Howard Negley, Carleton Young, Don Orlando, Ted Ryan. Screenplay: George Bruce, Harry Essex, Harold Greene, Rowland Brown. Cinematography: George E. Diskant. Art direction: Edward L. Ilou. Film editing: Buddy Small. Music: Paul Sawtell.

This intricately plotted film noir benefits more from its supporting cast of heavies -- Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, and Jack Elam -- than it does from its nominal leads, John Payne and Coleen Gray. Payne's Joe Rolfe gets framed for a big heist, but there's not enough evidence to convict him, so he sets out to track down the hoodlums who set him up. The first twist is that none of the actual thieves know who any of the others are -- they were all sent on their mission in masks, supplied by the mastermind, known to them as "Mr. Big." And he turns out to be a retired police captain (Preston Foster) who was forced out of his job by politics. And he isn't interested in the loot itself but in staging a capture of the thieves and a recovery of the money so he can get the reward and maybe even be reinstated in his old job. As if this twist isn't enough, he's also the father of the young woman (Gray) whom Rolfe falls in love with after he sleuths his way to the Mexican resort town where the plot leads everybody else. Fortunately, Phil Karlson's no-nonsense direction keeps the movie from getting snared in its own twists and turns.

T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)

T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947)

Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Alfred Ryder, Wallace Ford, Charles McGraw, Mary Meade, Jane Randolph, June Lockhart, Art Smith, Herbert Heyes, Jack Overman, John Wengraf, Jim Bannon, William Malten. Screenplay: John C. Higgins. Cinematography: John Alton. Art direction: Edward C. Jewell. Film editing: Fred Allen. Music: Paul Sawtell.

With its tough-guy cast, suspenseful screenplay, and superb noir-and-white cinematography by John Alton, T-Men is only slightly hindered by efforts to sell itself as a ripped-from-the-headlines True Story. It has a heavy-handed opener featuring the real head of the Treasury Department's investigative division, Elmer Lincoln Irey, selling us on the idea that the IRS is really our friend, and an ongoing voiceover narrative by the actor Reed Hadley that provides exposition we mostly don't need -- it could easily have been integrated into the dialogue. These flaws aside, the film has real grit as it follows T-man Dennis O'Brien (Dennis O'Keefe) and his partner Tony Genaro (Alfred Ryder) in their investigation of a counterfeiting scheme, encountering the usual menacing thugs and hard-bitten dames. Neither of the good guys has it easy, getting beat up and shot as they sleuth through the seamy side of '40s Los Angeles. Alton's camera gives us expressionistic angles and sinister shadows as it explores some well-chosen locations from Chinatown to a Turkish bath to the waterfront.