Criss Cross, while adding nothing earth shattering to the Noir Genre, is still a very fine textbook rendering of the form. Burt Lancaster seems to have made a million of these type films from the late forties into the early fifties, and few have done the genre as proud.
Lancaster is almost picture perfect as the love-sick schmuck Steve, combining a right mixture of toughness mixed with
a sensitivity that echoes Bogart in his prime and prefigures sensitive tough guys like Kevin Costner or Russell Crowe. I have always admired his movement on film...so graceful and athletic, as the circus acrobat he once was. Still, he could act, very believable in his portrayal of an armored truck driver who falls for the wrong kind of Dame, agreeing to help a gang rob one of his trucks to bankroll his relationship with the Dame...
Again, very predictable...but the execution is worth the view....as in tasty Yvonne DeCarlo as the black widow dame who uses her sex appeal and vulnerability as a way of claiming power and resources to back it up.
Noir has always needed this kind of bad girl on the make archetype who at one time entices and emasculates the powerful men she welcomes into her snare. DeCarlo does her job well, a la Lauren Bacall, and stands up nicely to all the boys in the film.
And finally, there is Dan Dureya, perhaps my all time favorite sleazy gangster player from this period of Hollywood...always insanity hidden in an almost likable, laconic approach...he has always been the friend you mother instantly hated while growing up...the one who most certainly would lead you wrong. He is a perfect, slightly comic foil to Lancaster's All American Football Star.
If Criss Cross is not the most memorable, or original of Film Noir offerings, what of it? It is a film that is most entertaining and exciting even if you kind of figure out how it's going to end about halfway through. Well worth the time!
TH Review's Rating: A fond four out of five stars!!
