i must have seen a different film!!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Like another warbler, Dick Powell, John Payne saw himself as a tough guy. So after fighting the war in films and singing in musical movies during the war, he went more and more into noirs, even producing one, Kansas City Confidential.In this film, which reminded me of Somewhere in the Night, Payne plays a war hero, given the Silver Star, who knows himself as Eddie Rice. He has a steel plate in his head from a battle injury and has permanent amnesia. He wants to know who he is, so he takes what information the doctor has on him and goes to Los Angles. He soon learns he was a thug, and a double-crossing thug at that, and the list of people who want to get even with him -- Eddie Riccardi -- is long.This is a pretty good movie, with great cinematography by John Alton, photographed in true noir fashion.Payne is very effective in his role. He was always a good, likable actor with impressive looks. He also had a brain in his head, putting his own money into Miracle on 34th Street when the studio was less than enthusiastic (and released it in August) and heavily investing in real estate. As Nina, Ellen Drew is good and very attractive.As a criticism -- I realize that in 1949 Los Angeles wasn't as populated as it is today, but it certainly had more than a dozen or so people in it. The minute this guy gets off the train, he starts running into people who know him, some of whom want him dead. Let's just say word spread instantly, with no twitter or texting.

....But the picture is 90 minutes long. "The Crooked Way" was cruising along with an unusually good storyline, some workmanlike acting performances and with the great John Alton's incomparable photography (Alton is a must for this genre and he never disappoints). John Payne reinvented himself in the late 40's, making the transition from musicals to noir just as Dick Powell did before him. Here he gives one of his best acting jobs as an amnesiac war vet who was a mob figure before enlisting. Sonny Tufts is cast against type as the mob boss and is remarkably good. They are ably supported by such stalwarts as Rhys Williams, John Doucette and weaselly Percy Helton. Ellen Drew is the love interest but is too refined in a part which called for someone like Claire Trevor, who could play trash in her sleep.Then about 10 minutes from the end the picture starts to unravel, with glaring illogic and several unanswered questions and non-sequiturs. For instance; why does Payne seek out Petey (whose part in the story is murky) to hide him out, why if he is the Boss does Tufts go in person to trap Payne - isn't that what his gunmen are for? and what was the point of trying to shoot it out alone with a squadron of heavily-armed police when he was cornered and without cover? Such questions would make you lower your rating on a first-rate picture. So I did.

A WW2 vet (John Payne) returns to Los Angeles from a rehab hospital in San Francisco to try to recoup his past after losing his memory during the war as a result of shrapnel that is too embedded in his brain to remove. This being a film noir, his past turns out to have been mostly spent on the other side of the law but is now atoned for in the audiences' eyes as he fought bravely enough in the war to have been awarded a Silver Star. However to the authorities in LA, it's a different story. A couple of LA detectives recognize him as someone they knew from before the war as he is departing the train station as he arrives back in LA and whisk him away to headquarters where no one believes his amnesia story or his medals, giving him his first hints as to who he is and was. He goes from being ex-soldier Eddie Rice to the underworld Eddie Riccardi, and the film explores which of these two possibilities he will end up as. The Riccardi character was involved before he went away to war with crime boss Vince Alexander who is played by Sonny Tufts. Payne is decidedly better than decent but Tufts seems downright impressive, especially at the beginning when he's having someone beaten up and then killed by two of his goons. The relationship between Payne's and Tuft's characters gets revealed as well as that of the relationship with night club singer Nina Martin (Ellen Drew). Directed by Robert Florey (Danger Signal), the pace is excellent, and the photography by John Alton captures some memorable scenes of near total darkness with nothing but the characters' outlines to be made out.

It's another one of those inexpensive mystery/gangster movies about an amnesic veteran who returns from the war and tries to recover his identity or, if he still has his memory, tries to figure out what's been happening in his absence. It's all pretty veiled. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Here, it's just unexceptional.John Payne discovers in Los Angeles that he has a shady past. But what else can you expect? (He turns out to have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine?) It's really another B feature with a careless plot and performances that are in no way interesting. Want an example of an unimaginable coincidence? He's just been released from an Army hospital. The psychiatrist has advised him to go to Los Angeles where he enlisted. That's the only thing they know about him. He steps off the train in beautiful Union Station. Two men are standing around and one turns to him and says, "Hey, Eddy!" A few minutes later he leaves them to make a phone call. He's spotted from across the street by his wife, who just happens to be at that particular point in space and time.Sonny Tufts is the most interesting performer in the picture. He usually is. He wears his debauchery on his face as if flying a flag. "Wow, have I been a bad boy!" I didn't find it worth sitting through. If I wanted a decent amnesia movie, I'd watch "The Bourne Identity" again. Someone else might enjoy it more. Judging from the user ratings, someone has.