Pushover

[3.5 stars] [IMDB Link] [Pushover]

I was in a film-noirish mood, I guess, so I went searching for one I hadn't seen. This 1954 one fit the bill. Couldn't help but notice that it was made a full 10 years after Fred MacMurray came to his bitter end in Double Indemnity. It has Kim Novak as the dame that lures him to his doom, not Barbara Stanwyck.

It leads off with a bank heist, the perps getting away with a cool $200K. (This inflation calculator says that's well over $2.2 million today.) And one of the thieves, Wheeler, also kills a bank guard, who's foolish enough to play hero.

Then there's a quick transition to Fred (playing cop Paul Sheridan) unaccountably picking up Kim (playing floozy Lona McLane). Wait, what does that have to do with anything? It turns out Sheridan is part of the team investigating the bank job; they've determined that Wheeler is Lona's boyfriend. So (apparently this was accepted cop practice in the 1950s) Sheridan was tasked with going undercover and, uh, getting under the covers, with Lona.

(It's the 1950s, so that's not made explicit, but come on.)

So Lona and Paul (a) fall in love and (b) hatch a scheme to entrap Wheeler, and abscond with the bank cash. Things keep going wrong for them, complicating their already complex plans. Paul's cop co-workers get increasingly suspicious. And, inevitably,…

This was Kim Novak's first major movie role. Based on the title, I kept thinking/hoping that she would reveal her truly nefarious scheme to make Paul the patsy, and abscond with the money all for herself, because she (correctly) saw him as an easy … Pushover.

Spoiler: that does not happen.