Walk a Crooked Mile

1948

Action / Crime / Drama / Film-Noir

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 55% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 55% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 1297 1.3K

noir spy cold war scotland yard fbi film noir

Plot summary

A security leak is found at a Southern California atomic plant. The authorities stand in fear that the information leaked would go to a hostile nation. To investigate the case more efficiently, Dan O'Hara, an FBI agent, and Philip Grayson, a Scotland Yard sleuth, join forces. Will they manage to stop the spy ring from achieving their aim?

Director

Gordon Douglas Photo
Gordon Douglas

Top cast

Charles Evans Photo
Charles Evans as Dr. Homer Allen
Grandon Rhodes Photo
Grandon Rhodes as Adolph Mizner
Frank Ferguson Photo
Frank Ferguson as Carl Bemish
Arthur Tovey Photo
Arthur Tovey as Plant Worker
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
838.8 MB
968*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds ...
1.52 GB
1440*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 31 min
Seeds ...

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by masonfisk 7 / 10

LAW & ORDER, COLD WAR STYLE...!

A 1948 film noir/police procedural. We're in the midst of the Cold War & American agents are on the hunt for Communist operatives which sets the scene as one of ours sees a wanted agent at a sporting event only to be gunned down (shocking for the time I would imagine as we see blood spatter across the man's face) by Raymond Burr (sporting a very Leninesque goatee). Enter the lead FBI agent, played by Dennis O'Keefe, who tracks the spotted man to San Francisco only to find the man murdered in his room even though the FBI were all over him. When they scour their surveillance footage they come up w/another enemy agent, disguised as a priest (which raised no flags), who spends his days in his apartment painting canvases which O'Keefe figures is the means of transporting information. Enter Louis Hayward, a Scotland Yard agent working the same case from the European side of things & he teams up w/O'Keefe to track down the cabal of enemy agents (the info in question is coming from a scientific collective on the cusp of a breakthrough) when they figure out hidden formulas are embedded on the paintings themselves, they figure one of the group is leaking the info. Very procedural in the extreme (I wouldn't be surprised if some would viewers will drop in the ubiquitous "dun dun" from Law & Order as each scene cuts into the next) but immensely engrossing, keeping you on the edge of your seat w/a satisfying gunfight taking place in a darkened home festooned w/Russia's best trying to win the day.
Reviewed by classicsoncall 7 / 10

"The miraculous we do immediately, the impossible takes a few minutes longer."

It occurred to me while watching this picture that if made just a few years earlier, it could have served well as a Sherlock Holmes film. A couple that come immediately to mind are "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" and "Sherlock Holmes in Washington". The difference though, in the case of "Walk a Crooked Mile", is the presence of those nasty Russian Commies in the place of Nazi agents. The opening screen narrative pays tribute to those federal agents who defend the country against saboteurs and no-goodniks who would 'walk a crooked mile' to do their dirty deeds.The story is tightly scripted with a number of twists and turns while teaming FBI Agent Dan O'Hara (Denis O'Keefe) with Scotland Yard counterpart Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward). O'Hara takes it upon himself to nickname Grayson 'Scotty' in service to his employer, I thought that was a rather nifty touch. The action takes place in Southern California and involves smuggling newly defined mathematical formulas out of the country by way of concealing them in artwork of San Francisco cityscapes. The intrigue involved in making this discovery was cleverly done, and though it occurs rather quickly for the sake of the story, one has to wonder about the number of man hours involved in the undercover work required to break a case like this.Just as in the Holmes films, proper devotion to the cause of patriotism on both sides of the Atlantic is displayed, but not in a way one might think and not via any of the principals. At one point, Grayson's landlady (Tamara Shayne) is roughed up, shot and killed by low-life Commie Krebs (an austere Raymond Burr), and with her dying breath, extols the virtue of a country that did so much for her. Grayson and O'Hara were suitably impressed.The film showed up on one of the cable channels in my area, featured as part of a noir film lineup, but for my money it more closely resembled an espionage thriller. It's got noir elements certainly, and if you want to consider Louise Albritton's role in the picture as your basic femme fatale, it would have worked, but she was eventually exonerated as part of the research lab team that included the traitors working for the Communists. I had to control my disdain for the character of Dr. Allen (Charles Evans) at the finale, one of the bad guys who disingenuously asserted his Constitutional rights when his treasonous role was discovered. Sounds kind of familiar when applied to present day, doesn't it?
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