From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-The Premature Nazi-Hunter-Dick Powell’s “Cornered” -A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Dick Powell’s film noir Cornered.

DVD Review

Cornered, starring Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Luther Adler, RKO Radio Pictures, 1945

Say a guy, maybe a guy who was a “premature” anti-fascist and fought in Spain in the 1930s, maybe not, but who did his bit, did his soldier bit, against the Nazi hordes trying to run over Europe, took a couple of hits for his efforts, one his own when his plane fell down over France, the other when his wartime bride, a French Resistance fighter, was executed by some bloody Nazi collaborator, a Vichy snitch felt he had to do something, something to get even after the war would that be alright?Everybody would say sure, hey, a guy is supposed to do something when his wife is murdered right. And so he does, not out of some big political motive to rid the world of Nazi scum, not to get even for the million crummy things that happened in Europe (and elsewhere) during those dark night World War II times but to even up the score on his wife. Even if they had only been married twenty days, she had crooked teeth and was too thin. The Nazis and their collaborators weren’t worried about short married lives, worried about fixing a resistance fighter’s crooked teeth or her weight problems, no way, just are you with us or them. And with them meant you were on short rations and short lives. But still a score needed to be settled and our soldier boy (Dick Powell) was just the boy to square things up in his own way.

But the trail was cold, the snitch dead, or supposed to be, and the prospects of getting from England to immediate post-war France to pick up the trail before it got colder through official channels was unlikely. So our intrepid soldier improvised, worked his way around channels (literally and figuratively) just because, well, because he has a hunch, a hunch is all, that things didn’t stack up. And they didn’t. They didn’t stack up in France where the snitch covered his tracks with a too pat staged death paper trail, they didn’t stack up in Switzerland where the snitch’s widow was allegedly “grieving” (and getting hubby’s insurance dough), and they didn’t stack up in Buenos Aires where she had flown the coop and where ex-Nazis, their collaborators, their wives, lovers, acolytes and their just defeated idea were entirely welcome.

Our boy will get many frequent flyer miles before he is through but he winds up in sunny, decayed, decadent Argentina as he circles in for the kill. And he does after plenty of misdirection (provided in part by Walter Slezak), plenty of tough talk, and plenty of dead ends. He finds his man (played by Luther Adler), and gets religion too, religion that these guys, these Nazi guys and their dreams didn’t stop in Europe in 1945. He signs up for the big tour, the big fight on a different front all over again. Welcome aboard, brother. Oh yah, beware, be very beware of guys out to avenge the death of dames with crooked teeth and who are too skinny but willing to fight the monsters of the planet such men, such average men, are dangerous .