Nice effects though.

Just perfect...

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Charles McGraw and Joan Dixon face a "Roadblock" in this 1951 film also starring Milburn Stone of "Gunsmoke" fame and Lowell Gilmore. McGraw is Joe Peters, an insurance detective who meets a beautiful, sexy woman, Diane, while traveling home by airplane after a case. The whole airplane thing was interesting in itself - spouses could fly half-price, I guess (as the Dixon character claims she and Joe are married so she can do so - she didn't have to show ID either). And though it still happens, it's less common to board from outdoors today.Joe falls hard for Diane, but she isn't interested - he's not in her league. She wants someone who will spend big money on her. One night, Joe sees her in a club where he's on an investigation, and she's with the biggest mobster in town, Kendall Webb (Gilmore). Eventually, Joe's and Diane's passion get the better of them. Webb warns Joe that Diane's enamored state of being in love with a poor man is just temporary - once the bloom is off, she'll go for the money again. Joe decides to go into partnership with Webb and steal $1.4 million that's scheduled to be on a train.McGraw, who had a big career in television until a few years before his death in 1980, is a solid noir actor - tough and good-looking. The character of Diane, however, is the one to watch. Dixon, helped by the script, gives her many layers and leaves you wondering (though you do know the answer) - was she a big chiseler or did she really care?"Roadblock" is good and interesting if implausible - Joe gets himself in deeper and deeper. It's hard to believe he would turn that dramatically that quickly. It's a minor point in a way because it's still an atmospheric noir.

In my book, all true film-noir films are good in one way or another. There's just something about a post war film-noir thriller and "Roadblock" as as good as any of them. I guess this qualifies as a B-picture, but I refuse to see it that way. What I liked about it was how the femme fatal crosses over from being a gold digging ice princess to actually choosing love over money. She is played by non other than Joan Dixon who went on to appear in only about four other films. Too bad, I thought she was really lovely. Then there's the great Charles McGraw. He's just made for the film-noir genre and just about my favorite noir actor. Here he literally plays good cop/bad cop. I actually caught myself feeling disappointed that he was a good guy who went wrong. For me, it had a great feel. The cinematography was done by Nicholas Musuraca who had one Oscar nod to his credit. A top camera guy is always as big in a noir as any of the on-screen actors. At under 75 minutes it certainly doesn't wear out it's welcome. If you love film noir, then add this one to your list!BTW, I had recorded "Roadblaock"on DVD and just watched it yet again. Over two years later, my original review still stands. I watch it every time it's on TCM and I love it more and more. Along with Jack Carson, Charles McGraw is one of my very favorite "second tier" actors and "Roadblock" will always be a film that I'l urge others to seek out.Oh, one last thing, "We Don't Have Your Size!"

This film contains one film's most intriguing ideas: whether an honest man whose life and career are built around law-enforcement would throw away all his principles for love? Unfortunately, this film doesn't quite become good enough to make us care about this question.Joe Peters (played by Charles McGraw) is an insurance investigator. He and his partner Harry Miller (played by redoubtable character actor Louis Jean Heydt) are the best in the business. The film opens with them springing an elaborate but ingenious trap on a bank robber in order to trick the thief into revealing where he hid his stash. It's a well-written, well-acted, surprising opening scene and raises the viewer's expectations for the film.Sadly, these expectations are not met. Peters is detailed to get the money back to Los Angeles (although why they simply would not deposit the cash in a bank and have the funds wired to L.A. seems not to have occurred to the men). On the way, Peters runs into a woman, Diane (played with a sort of bored iciness by Joan Dixon), who pretends to be Peters' wife in order to con the airline into giving her a half-price ticket to L.A.One of the most important obstacles to overcome in a film like this is the viewer's disinclination to believe that the insurance investigator is as honest, principled and dedicated as he must be in order for his later moral fall to be believable and interesting. Unfortunately, "Roadblock" never tries to overcome this hurdle. Poor Peters immediately falls for the greedy, icy, selfish Diane -- although why is never made clear (Dixon's portrayal makes Diane completely unsympathetic, which in turns leads the viewer to be suspicious of Peters' sudden love for her). It is completely out of character. Had the film set up Peters' character better -- perhaps by giving us glimpses of how emotionally empty he was feeling, or perhaps by having him confront his loneliness -- "Roadblock" would have been a better picture.From this point on, however, "Roadblock" is simply a standard crime film. It cannot really be considered film noir, as it does not try to explore any of the seediness of the criminal world or give us insight into the "reality" of crime. In fact, the main criminal -- Kendall Webb, played by Lowell Gilmore as if he were sleepwalking through the role -- is a playboy with a wife in a penthouse in Vegas.Once Peters makes the decision to try to woo Diane (who refuses to marry for love, only money) by helping Webb knock over a bank and escape the clutches of the law (which, by the way, is seemingly non-existent in the world created by "Roadblock's" writers) and the insurance company (one wonders why the FDIC is never mentioned, although it existed at the time this film was made), the only thing worth paying attention to is the actual plotting and crime itself. I have to admit that this is a tightly-written little crime drama, with a believable heist that is well executed by the thieves and which unravels (as it must) due to solid detective work rather than chance and coincidence (as in so many lesser films).But the heart of the film -- Peters' moral collapse, the effect this has on his personality (he becomes angry at work, which is a plot element stolen from "Double Indemnity") and marriage to Diane, and the lengths to which he goes to keep his ill-gotten gains (and hence Diane) -- are not nearly as well-written or acted. Charles McGraw (who had a long and fairly illustrious career as a character actor) turns in a good performance as Peters. His desperation and agony over the though of losing Diane is palpable and subtlely acted, and he has a terrific way of acting with his face (check out the scene where he stages Webb's murder and has to watch the body burn) that really helps lift the film from C-grad to B-grade. But it's not enough to overcome the stolid acting by Dixon and Gilmore.The film's terribly predictable ending -- the bad guys get their comeuppance, the woman abandons her greed and falls in love, the best friend is betrayed, etc. -- doesn't help, either. There's nothing special about Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography, except for the obsessiveness with medium shots -- and it is nowhere near as inspired as his work on "The Magnificent Ambersons," "Deadline at Dawn," or "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer." Another 45 minutes of character development at the front of the film would have helped set up Peters much better and given us more interest in the character of Diane.

Drop a laurel wreath on Charles McGraw's huge, sculptural head – you can almost see it in the Greco-Roman wing of a museum, perched atop a pedestal. He was one of the noir cycle's most serviceable pieces of furniture, along with Raymond Burr and Elisha Cook, Jr. Most often he lurked in the murky background, but sometimes, most memorably in The Narrow Margin, he stayed front and center. He also shuttled uncomplainingly between the underworld and the keepers of law and order. Starring in Roadblock, he tries to straddle both worlds.This no-frills noir opens with a tease: McGraw stages a murder, then abducts a witness whom he manipulates into buying his way out of certain death with the loot from a bank job. But the movie is setting up McGraw as a straight-arrow insurance investigator who'll stop at nothing to achieve his goal.Until he crosses paths with Joan Dixon, that is. A crafty gold-digger, she finds him sweet but `honest;' she's saving her sexual artillery for more affluent game, which she finds in a smooth racketeer (Lowell Gilmore). But McGraw can't get her out of his blood and, knowing that furs and jewels are the path to her mercenary heart, strikes up a deal with the mobster. He offers him a million-and-a-quarter, insured by his company, which he knows will be traveling by train; if Gilmore pulls the job off, McGraw will settle for $400 grand.The irony – and the script's least convincing turn – is that Dixon falls for McGraw anyway and renounces her grasping ways. (Not only does this ring false, it also makes her far less arresting a character.) Despite second thoughts, McGraw gets his share of the take. Then, naturally, he's assigned to the team of investigators trying to crack the case....Harold Daniels, who had a brief and largely undistinguished career as both actor and director, keeps the action swift and simple – it races down an hour-plus of highway until it reaches its titular roadblock. The movie goes down as easily and satisfyingly as a hot dog and a beer.