Criss Cross

Film noir is by definition bleak, with rarely a happy ending, but even by those standards Criss Cross, from 1949 and reteaming star Burt Lancaster and director Robert Siodmak after The Killers, is especially grim. It is a prime example of a decent fellow being done in by the love for the wrong woman.

Lancaster plays Steve Thompson, who has returned to his home of Los Angeles after spending time away, ostensibly to try to forget his short and tempestuous marriage to Anna (Yvonne DeCarlo). He has no intention of trying to find her, and moves back in with his mother and gets his old job back, driving armored cars. But he's drawn to his favorite watering hole, and runs into her. They try to rekindle their relationship, but she impulsively marries a gangster, Dan Duryea.

They still can't stay away from each other, and when discovered together in his house, Lancaster covers by proposing a robbery of a payroll, with him as the inside man. Duryea is intrigued, but of course Lancaster has no intention of honoring the deal, and he and DeCarlo plan to slip away with the money.

Criss Cross is thus two of noir's favorite tropes: the heist flick and the dumb sap who thinks with his dick (or heart, depending) instead of his brain. DeCarlo's character is so unpleasant that in Lancaster's case it must be the former. Criss Cross is really a steady diet of Lancaster's bad decisions.

If the film is a downer, it's a well-made downer. There is an over all feeling of menace--Duryea, who by all accounts was a very nice man, specialized in playing this kind of creep, and he's great here, while Lancaster, who always resisted playing the classic hero, is also top-notch as a conflicted man. He is especially good in a scene at the bar, drowning his sorrows after losing Anna (he thinks) and picking a fight with anyone who tries to talk to him.

Siodmak, as in his other two films of his I've written about, is a master of suspense. Lancaster, after the robbery and hailed as a hero, is laid up in this hospital with a broken arm. He knows that Duryea knows he's been double-crossed, and expects someone to show up to kill him. Just who is that seemingly innocent man sitting in the hallway?

Criss Cross is one of the better noir films, especially when considering it's adherence to the rules of noir--don't trust a dame, and no heist goes as planned.