Trim detective yarn suffers from high expectations it can’t meet since the trim detective at hand is Philip Marlowe and the story Raymond Chandler’s THE HIGH WINDOW.* But taken on its own, this John Brahm programmer is smooth & striking as George Montgomery’s youngish Marlowe (sounding like Clark Gable) wisecracks thru a case when widowed matron Florence Bates calls him in to retrieve a rare coin (the doubloon) gone missing from her collection. She claims to know who took it, but won’t tell. Just bring it back. Suspects include Conrad Janis’s disrespectful son; personal secretary Nancy Guild (working a Gene Tierney meets Veronica Lake act); and a mob loan shark, a coin dealer, a newsreel cameraman, plus various cops working a step and a half behind Marlowe. Stumbling over murder victims, Marlowe barely has time to get beat up in this one; instead, every other character pulls a gun on him . . . earning a laugh each time. And what impeccable technique Brahm brings to the zippy, easy-to-read action sequences. Textbook worthy stuff even if cinematographer Lloyd Ahearn can’t match the noir textures Lucien Ballard & Joseph LaShelle gave Brahm in HANGOVER SQUARE/’45 and THE LODGER/’44.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Filmed before, as TIME TO KILL/’42, last of the Lloyd Nolan MICHAEL SHAYNE P.I. programmers (not seen here). OR: For more Brahm, HANGOVER SQUARE with Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, George Sanders & Bernard Herrmann's piano concerto climax.
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