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Friday, April 8, 2011

The Money Trap (1965)

A good cop (Glenn Ford) married to a woman (Elke Sommer) whose lifestyle exceeds his income comes across a case involving money and drugs. Temptation rears its ugly head and he contemplates robbing the bad guys and when his greedy partner (Ricardo Montalban) insists on being cut in, the die is cast. Based on the novel by Lionel White and directed by Burt Kennedy (SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF). The film has many elements of film noir but never quite fuses into the genre itself but ends up as a tidy little crime thriller nonetheless. Kennedy does a decent job directing but the film lacks both a visual style (the wide screen Panavision cinematography by Paul Vogel is adequate, nothing more) nor a sense of fatalism that usually infuses the genre. Sommer looks gorgeous but doesn't have much to do which is probably all for the best considering how stilted she is here. In the film's best performance, Ford's GILDA co-star Rita Hayworth plays a down on her luck lush whose dead husband provides the opportunity for Ford and Montalban to pull the heist involving a crooked doctor (Joseph Cotten) who is a front for the East Coast mob. The jazz score is by Hal Schaefer. With William Campbell, Ted De Corsia, James Mitchum and Argentina Brunetti.

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