If you're a younger film fan, or maybe just a casual film fan, and you can't quite understand why Humphrey Bogart was such a big star for a while then, forgive me, I would have to insist that you just haven't watched a Humphrey Bogart movie. The man is riveting, and often also feels like the personification of cool, and he had the added benefit of being placed in some great features. While not at the very top of any ranked list, Dead Reckoning is a very enjoyable noir that pairs our leading man alongside the lovely Lizabeth Scott.
Bogart is Rip Murdock, a military man who ends up on a personal quest when he finds out about the death of a fellow serviceman. Not only that, he discovers that the man may not be who he thought he was, and he was suspected of murder. His quest leads him to meet Coral Chandler (Scott) and Martinelli (Morris Carnovsky), a criminal masquerading as a legitimate businessman.
Mainly written by Oliver H. P. Garrett and Steve Fisher, with various people responsible for the main story and adptation, and directed by John Cromwell, there's nothing here behind the cameras to mark out Dead Reckoning as an above-average noir. It looks good enough, the screenplay has some excellent lines of dialogue sprinkled throughout, and the plot is both slippery and fairly easy to predict. That doesn't make it special though.
Bogart, however, Bogart makes it special. As does Scott. The two leads work well, particularly when sizing one another up and trying to maintain a relationship that is mutually beneficial, and Bogart feels completely at ease in a role that plays to his strengths. He's confident, smart and quick enough to recognise when he's being conned, and he's willing to risk letting someone inside his exterior armour if they can prove that they're not working an angle on him. Scott plays the ambiguity of her character all the way to the end, as expected, allowing viewers to constantly wonder about her role in the murder being investigated. Carnovsky doesn't need to be ambiguous. He's very enjoyable as a charming and unflappable antagonist, and Marvin Miller is also good value as his main henchman, Krause. Others worth keeping an eye out for are William Prince (in the small, but vital, role of Johnny Drake), George Chandler, James Bell, and Charles Cane.
More of a comfort viewing than many other noirs, thanks to the charisma quotient and the perfect pacing that helps the 100-minute runtime breeze by easily enough, this may not be considered essential, but it's one I will highly recommend to those who want to spend some time in the company of some star performers shining brightly in material that seems to have been nicely tailored around them.
8/10
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