Pun Salad

It's a long wait time for Gran Torino, so Netflix sent this instead, a 1949 film noir classic from director Robert Siodmak with Burt Lancaster as the protagonist/fall guy/sucker/schmuck, Yvonne DeCarlo as the femme fatale who leads him into patsydom, and Dan Duryea as the psycho thug menacing them both.

Burt works for an armored car company; his relationship with ex-wife Miss Yvonne gets him roped into a heist scheme. The movie's opening scenes show him wangling to be the driver of the armored car while another guard, an old guy nicknamed "Pops" rides in back. (Is Pops toast, you ask? That's a safe bet.) Then we get a long flashback showing how Burt got into this pickle, then finally the violent robbery, followed by the dark conclusion.

The movie's theme is betrayal: lots of double-crossing, a few instances of triple-crossing, and I'm pretty sure at least one quadruple-cross. You just can't trust these guys.

Burt Lancaster, as usual, dominates every scene he's in; they don't make 'em like him any more.

If you're like me, you're asking: Yvonne DeCarlo? What was she in? Wasn't she Danny Thomas's wife in Make Room for Daddy? Nope, you're thinking of Marjorie Lord. (Or maybe Jean Hagen.) Ms. Yvonne played Mrs. Munster in The Munsters. And also Mrs. Moses in The Ten Commandments.