The greatest movie ever!

One of the best films i have seen

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Dead Reckoning is a film noir that would had benefited from a stronger leading lady and if the film had not followed the strictures of the film noir genre so slavishly.Humphrey Bogart gives a sardonic but tough performance as Captain Rip Murdock (Bogart) who searches for his friend and army buddy Sergeant Johnny Drake (William Prince) who fled when he was told he was to receive a medal after returning home from the war.Murdock goes to a southern coastal town and finds out that Drake has died. As he digs closer, he finds that Johnny was once involved with a femme fatale, singer Coral Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) and got mixed up with murder and a gangster. A reason why Johnny craved anonymity.The plot is perfunctory but does feel a little slippery here and there by being a little too convoluted at times.

Some Heavy-Handed, Anachronistic Traits keeps this from being a Top-Rung Film-Noir. The overuse of the Paratrooper Theme that becomes almost Cringe Inducing as the Movie moves along, and the usual Hard-Boiled Chandleresque Patter just never stops (there can be too much of a good thing).The Dark Atmosphere and even Darker Characters are Welcome and there is some Sharpness to the Proceedings although it does Weaken in the Romance Area at times and comes off as an Odd Coupling between Bogart and Lizabeth Scott. This is an Overwritten Story that has some good Lines, but a lot of it seems Artificial, going against the Noir Strength of Heightened Realism. This Entertaining Movie is too long and padded out to an, again, Unrealistic and Sappy Closing Line and Shot. But there is certainly enough here to make it worth a watch and is unarguably a Film-Noir, but finds its Flaws keeping it in the Midland of the Genre.

This is really a diabolical film with a soldier who is about to receive a medal for bravery, running away and ultimately killed.Seems that our soldier was accused of murder. His army buddy, Rip, Humphrey Bogart, investigates and this leads to further murder, mayhem and who knows what else in this far-fetched drama.Liz Scott is the mysterious woman with quite a past and she belts out a song at the night club owned by Morris Carnovsky, quite a crook. Note his cohort is none other than Marvin Miller, who some years later made it big on television by handing out those million dollars to people in the hit show "The Millionaire."The film is rather slow moving and you really lose interest in it. Only by the end, does the full plot come out in a totally diabolical way.

Don't you just love those film noir titles that just reach out and grab your interest, despite having no direct relevance to the movie content...? Obviously, like the pulp fiction book-source, it's a device to attract casual interest from passers-by looking at cinema-hoardings or book displays. This is definitely one of those and moreover director John Cromwell, not one I'd regard as being in the Hollywood pantheon, somehow manages to get his name above the title too.Good for him, because this is a cracking and mostly pulsating film noir, led by the inimitable Bogart again immersing himself in a meaty role, ostensibly a demobbed army captain but evidentially a sub-Sam Spade type adventurer who gets up to his neck in danger as he attempts to track down his army-buddy-with-a-secret Johnny and taking in encounters with a gambling-den boss, his hired muscle who gets up close and personal in a far from pleasant way with Bogart's face and Lizabeth Scott as the femme fatale playing both ends as you would expect.The movie starts with a straight-away drop-in to the action leading up, you just know it, to a lengthy flashback from Bogie, involving a fairly contrived unburdening of not quite his soul to an ex-forces padre. The background story is raw and pacy enough to hold your interest pretty much all the way through with taut and edgy dialogue, natch, only lapsing a little when Scott & Bogart apparently hitch their wagons together and get all starry-eyed. Not to worry, a quick look at your watch tells you there are still 20 minutes or so to go and you know you're in for an exciting guns (and fires) - blazing finish.Bogart's great as per...and Scott is just fine for the most part in her Bacall-clone part, all smoky eyes and voice, even getting into a noir-trademark white outfit (a la Stanwyck & Turner) for the second half, although she acts a pretty poor deathbed scene in the final reel and can't lip-synch her early-on torch song for toffee. The villains don't exactly come across as villainous however, which lightens the tension a tad, the henchman in particular wimping out when Bogart sets fire to the boss's apartment - you'll laugh out loud (as I did) at his pathetic scream as he exits through a window.Nevertheless, the movie crackles along satisfactorily until its downbeat er... reckoning and employs and respects enough noir conventions to keep aficionados happy...including me.