hyped garbage

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Pop culture treats some of its icons better than others, and "Quicksand" demonstrates convincingly that Mickey Rooney is unjustly underrated as a "real" actor (and not just "Andy Hardy" or a guest cameo appearance in a movie or TV show where he plays himself.) Rooney is absolutely believable here going somewhat against type as a likable, but not-especially-bright (or honest) working stiff whose life completely unravels after he gives into temptation to swipe/borrow $20 from the office cash register until he can tap his friends for the money they owe him.($20 was a good chunk of change back in a day when lunch at a diner cost 40 cents, though). In fact, the performances here range from pretty good to very good indeed, especially Peter Lorre, who manages to be disreputable and pathetic at the same time and whose every line oozes weariness and bleak humor. Also of special interest was Jeanne Cagney's role as "the Blonde" (who of course leads our protagonist down the road to ruin)- for the first minute she was on camera, I just couldn't see how she was going to fill that role, and then her hard features lit up and transformed into something altogether more interesting and appealing.And that transformation happened often and reliably enough that I began looking forward to seeing it.The plot is tightly constructed, although it relies too much on coincidence at a couple points, as Rooney's character keeps making more bad decisions and his crimes escalate from petty theft to robbery to burglary and Grand Theft Auto, to assault and murder and kidnapping...but in every case, it's not something the character wants to do, and so somehow he manages to remain a sympathetic figure. (He even feels bad about the way he treats the good woman who is in love with him). The subtext for the screen-play is even more interesting than the actual events of the film; early on it becomes obvious that everything in modern day society is stacked against "the little guy", and straying from the approved path brings punishment swift and sure...even if the little guy didn't mean any harm. It ends the way it must (since this is Rooney's film, it couldn't possibly end in any other way), which makes me wonder why they wanted to do a noir film in the first place rather than a straight melodrama...but there's plenty of solid, enjoyable film-making here, enough that anyone with a taste for this genre would find it worth their time.

Mickey Rooney plays an auto mechanic who meets a new cashier at the diner he eats his lunch at. She's a blond, while the girl who's in love with him is a brunette, so, given the state of aesthetics back then, there is no question but to go for the blond, which sets off a fairly overly concocted, but interestingly done, chain of events. Jeanne Cagney, as the blonde, comes with a dark background that's hinted at in the film, and a part of it we see with her connection to Peter Lorre who runs a shady looking arcade. As a later Lorre entry, his part is not at all bad, especially when he rather expertly wields a switchblade in one scene. Cagney has the right look for her part as the woman who first reels Rooney in and then encourages his criminal behavior. The title of this movie is apt though kind of melodramatic, as Rooney sinks deeper into crime in order to try to climb out of it.

Quicksand (1950) ** 1/2 (out of 4)A squeaky clean mechanic (Mickey Rooney) asks a hot blonde (Jeanne Cagney) out on a date and she accepts but he has a problem and that problem is that he's broke. He winds up snatching twenty-bucks from his bosses cash register but this here just leads to one problem after another and he soon finds himself running from the police. This crime-noir film really isn't anything overly special but I think fans of Rooney are going to find it interesting as he both ruins and helps the film. He somewhat ruins it because he's just not believable in the early scenes where he's picking up the hot girl, acting like a poor boy and there's even a couple scenes where he's smoking and obviously not knowing what he's doing. The low-budget nature of the film probably kept an outtake in where he tries to light a cigarette but messes up and has to strike a match to light it again. The early noir moments of our typical male hero just really wasn't made for someone like Rooney. However, it somewhat works in the film's favor because the screenplay here is pretty stupid as what we've basically got is an idiot guy who does something stupid, tries to correct it by doing something dumber and soon this dumb guy is running for his life. The entire premise is pretty far-fetched and at times very silly but this is where Rooney starts to work. Since you don't expect someone like Rooney to be a criminal these dumb mistakes his character makes seems somewhat natural because of who is doing them. Rooney makes it somewhat plausible that his character, being new to crime, would commit such stupid mistakes over and over and on this level the performance and movie works. I thought it was rather fun seeing Rooney doing some of this stuff including strangling a man and getting into several fights with the girl's ex-boss who is played by Peter Lorre. Seeing good boy Rooney going up against sleaze ball Lorre made for some fun scenes. Both actors are just fine in their roles as is Cagney as the femme fatale. You can't help but enjoy her performance because she perfectly captures that poor brat who will take advantage of any sap just to get what she wants. Barbara Bates plays a woman in love with Rooney and we even get Richard Lane playing the main cop. I think noir fans will probably find a lot of the movie silly due to Rooney so that's why I think it's going to appeal to his fans more than anyone else. The movie has a lot of silly moments and I think it's fair to say that too much happens to this guy in such a short amount of time but it still features enough to make it worth viewing. It's certainly not a classic but as a fan of Rooney I enjoyed it.

Something very different for Mickey Rooney in this 1950 film. For just like in quicksand, once you enter, you go deeper and deeper. The surprise here was the ending since you would think it was all downhill for Rooney.Jeanne Cagney is the femme fatale here. She is quite a temptress who further drags Rooney down to near-murder. In the same year that she had a brief part in the Oscar winning "All About Eve," as Anne Baxter's pursuer from Erasmus Hall High School, Barbara Bates has a pretty meaty part here as the decent girl caught up in Rooney's downhill slide.The film is a perfect example of how doing one thing wrong just seems to spiral out of control.