Virtually every review I've read here uses the term 'noir' to describe this film, but I don't think it makes that cut. The picture's not bleak enough, and most of the story takes place in Mexico, so the ambiance is more on hot and sweaty instead of your usual dark and foggy atmospherics. Certainly Coleen Gray is no femme fatale here, that role might better have gone to Dona Drake if she wasn't so busy selling eleven dollar baubles to bedazzled vacationers.
That's not to say it doesn't hold one's interest as a pretty gripping crime and caper film. The plot twist derives from the disgruntled ex-police chief Foster (Preston Foster) who masterminds a bank heist in order to redeem himself and potentially get his old job back. The business with the masks seemed a clever idea, but for me the whole scheme fell apart in Borados. Think about it - with a pre-arranged destination for the criminals and virtually no one else around at the hotel, how would the bad guys NOT be able to figure out who each other was? So I had to let that slide in order for the rest of the picture to work for me.
Now if I had to go out and cast the three best mugs for a TV or movie Western back in the Fifties, there's no doubt I'd call on Jack Elam, Lee Van Van Cleef and Neville Brand. That's why it was so darned entertaining to see them all here in a non-Western venue engaged in their typical nastiness. It's too bad Elam's character didn't make it to Borados though, but then John Payne wouldn't have had the ruse he needed to proceed on his own personal undercover assignment. Speaking of which, for a floral company delivery driver who just got canned, how did he manage the resources to travel to and stay in a Mexican hotel? Just wondering.
Anyway, when the dust finally settles, Foster/Foster manages to redeem himself without being fingered for his role in the armored truck heist, and Joe Rolfe (Payne) winds up with the ex-chief's daughter, having almost blown it earlier with that restless gun of his. My best takeaway from the film however is a line the real Pete Harris had down in Tijuana to Joe outside the gambling house - "You been givin' me the fish eye all night." Can you imagine that coming from Jack Elam?
That's not to say it doesn't hold one's interest as a pretty gripping crime and caper film. The plot twist derives from the disgruntled ex-police chief Foster (Preston Foster) who masterminds a bank heist in order to redeem himself and potentially get his old job back. The business with the masks seemed a clever idea, but for me the whole scheme fell apart in Borados. Think about it - with a pre-arranged destination for the criminals and virtually no one else around at the hotel, how would the bad guys NOT be able to figure out who each other was? So I had to let that slide in order for the rest of the picture to work for me.
Now if I had to go out and cast the three best mugs for a TV or movie Western back in the Fifties, there's no doubt I'd call on Jack Elam, Lee Van Van Cleef and Neville Brand. That's why it was so darned entertaining to see them all here in a non-Western venue engaged in their typical nastiness. It's too bad Elam's character didn't make it to Borados though, but then John Payne wouldn't have had the ruse he needed to proceed on his own personal undercover assignment. Speaking of which, for a floral company delivery driver who just got canned, how did he manage the resources to travel to and stay in a Mexican hotel? Just wondering.
Anyway, when the dust finally settles, Foster/Foster manages to redeem himself without being fingered for his role in the armored truck heist, and Joe Rolfe (Payne) winds up with the ex-chief's daughter, having almost blown it earlier with that restless gun of his. My best takeaway from the film however is a line the real Pete Harris had down in Tijuana to Joe outside the gambling house - "You been givin' me the fish eye all night." Can you imagine that coming from Jack Elam?