Amazon.com: A certified film noir classic, Criss Cross embraces the genre's darkness with an uncompromising tale of doomed lovers and multilayered betrayal. Reuniting with director Robert Siodmak after their success with The Killers, Burt Lancaster plays a love-struck loser who seals his fate when he returns to Los Angeles to find his ex-wife (Yvonne DeCarlo) eager to rekindle their love against all better judgment. She encourages their torrid affair but marries a mobster (Dan Duryea); to deflect suspicion, Lancaster lures Duryea into an armored-truck robbery, creating a vortex of greed and passion from which he cannot escape. Featuring the brief screen debut of Tony Curtis, Criss Cross is a stylish masterpiece of clashing fates and fatal attractions; Franz Planer's cinematography creates a shadow world in which every desire is tainted by the threat of violence, and Miklos Rozsa's score underlines a love story that could never end happily. Film noir doesn't get any bleaker--or better--than this. --Jeff Shannon
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Rating: - Good film Noir ! Burt Lancaster plays a sap in this one
Ever fall in love with a girl that no one likes ? Well here is one movie that has that situation is it. Burt is love sick in this, despite his family and a friend who is a cop to stay away from her. He should have. Anyway, I really like this movie. Burt Lancaster plays a sap for Lily Munster, well Yvonne De Carlo who cant stay away from her,& wants to give her everything.. He loves her and she is a femme fatele who is married to a crook named Slim (Dan Duryea) They plan to steal a ton of money from an armored truck which of course backfires with double crossing.(I wont spoil anything with the double cross or the shocking ending) This was a good noir,strong story and acting performances were all top notch here. Your basic Noir with Gangsters back in the golden age. A good classic worth checking out.
Rating: - Among the best of film noir
This is classic film noir in all respects: dark moody lighting, flawed "hero", femme fatale, jealous husband, gray-area moral quandaries, pessimistic tone, unhappy ending, jaded, pseudo-sophisticated dialog. How about this gem of dialog where the Burt Lancaster character says:
"A man eats an apple. He gets a piece of the core stuck between his teeth. He tries to work it out with some cellophane from a cigarette pack. What happens? The cellophane gets stuck in there too. Anna? What was the use. I knew that somehow I'd wind up seeing her that night."
I love the extended scene of the band playing an interesting rumba (a little over 2 minutes) when the Burt Lancaster character walks into the Round-Up Club, looking for Anna. They show Esy Morales and His Rumba Band playing a pretty swinging, pretty cool rumba ("Jungle Fantasy") that I like a lot. (Never heard it before the movie, but like it ... Read More
Rating: - Man Does Wrong to Win Love
This is a great noir. Lancaster is a man governed by forces he cannot understand. He wants to get away from ex-wife DeCarlo but can't thinking about her and seeking her out, even after she marries creepy Dan Duyea and thus commits himself to crime just to win her back. "Man does wrong to win love" is the most basic film noir plot, and this is one of the early films to set it in stone. Aside from the great story, characters, and dialog, the film has great sets long exterior shots of parts of L.A. that no longer exist, like the Bunker Hill neighborhood.
Rating: - Which movie is it?
The film shown on this Amazon page is a drama about a twelve year old boy (David Arnott) raised by a single mom (Goldie Hawn), who happens to be a stripper, in Key West in 1969. It's a well-made film with good acting, but nothing special; it grabs your attention to the situation, but never really resolves it very insightfully.
Most reviewers here have mistakenly written about the 1949 Burt Lancaster film Criss Cross which takes place in Los Angeles, not Key West.
So which is this, the Goldie Hawn movie, shown, or the Burt Lancaster film, as described? I guess I'd give both 4 stars, but would like to know what I'm buying!
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- Good film Noir ! Burt Lancaster plays a sap in this one
- Among the best of film noir
