THE RAZOR'S EDGE (1946)

Young Tyrone Power is given grief by his wealthy girlfriend Gene Tierney, because she wants him to quit "loafing" and get a high-powered job and acquire a lot of money that she can be proud of.  He loves her, but a brush with death on the final day of WWI left him filled with questions about the purpose of life.  He moves to Paris to find himself.  During this same time a friend, Anne Baxter, gets married to a simple man, they have a child and are quite happy together.  I'm not going to get all into the rest of the story, you can do that yourself, but I liked THE RAZOR'S EDGE.  It's a pretty slow starter, but it's redeemed by a very good second half.

The reason I watched THE RAZOR'S EDGE was, as you don't remember, I was curious about how Anne Baxter won over Teresa Wright from THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES for Best Supporting Actress...and I'm still curious.  Anne Baxter's performance was very good, but not near as perfect as Teresa Wright's.

KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952)

[Update 09/27/2021: Need to rewatch and redo this review completely. Just deleted all the screenshots. Going to just restart this whole thing from scratch..as I find time, so expect this disclaimer to disappear around 2037.]

Revenge fueled noir about a police chief forced into an early retirement who nearly gets away with the perfect crime: tricking three wanted men into robbing an armored truck and then "accidentally" spotting them and turning them in for the $300,000 reward. Pretty slick plan and he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for florist delivery driver John Payne. You see florist delivery driver John Payne is the unsuspecting fall guy in the operation (the crooks use a double of his truck) and immediately after the robbery he's arrested then beaten and tortured for days by the police in an effort to get an confession. It's not until the vehicle double is found that he's released, but by now he's been fired from his job and his reputation drug through the poo-poo in the newspapers. The only thing left for him to do is catch (or kill) the robbers himself...especially since they're sitting on a million clams.

Some of the tough guy scenes are a little dated and cheesy, but the pace is nice, good story, awesome hard-boiled slang and a strong cast: John Payne, Neville Brand, Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam, Preston Foster and Coleen Gray. There's also a number uncredited appearances by lesser known actors like Carleton Young, James Conaty, Charles Cane, Lee Phelps (who starred in over 600 movies!!!), William Haade, Howard Negly and Roger Moore...no not that Roger Moore, the other one from the "Three Stooges" shorts and a ton of movies.

Definitely worth a purchase if you’re a noir fan.

THE CROOKED WAY (1949)

Eddie Rice (John Payne) has all kinds of problems. First and foremost is he’s been in a military hospital in San Francisco for the last 5 years with total amnesia thanks to a hunk of metal he got stuck in his noodle back in the big WWII. The doctors have done all they can do, so, since he enlisted in Los Angeles, the military gives him a pat on the back and a train ticket to LA. He gets to LA and literally as he’s walking out of the train depot, the coppers pick him up and take him to the police station. There they inform him that he’s a gangster and not wanted in town. As he’s leaving the police station, the “only in movies” coincidences continue and who else but his wife sees him! Naturally, she calls the local kingpin and he and his men beat the crap out of Eddie and toss him down a fire escape! Being an idiot, none of this is enough to convince Eddie to leave town. No siree Bob. As soon as he wakes up on the fire escape (probably covered in pigeon poop and cat piss), Eddie starts a one-man war with the local gangsters. And by “war”, I mean Eddie getting knocked unconscious multiple more times.

I like THE CROOKED WAY. It's a watchable older noir with cool cinematography by John Alton, but the there just isn't enough story to properly fill the runtime and Eddie is way too dumb to have any sympathy for.