La trampa del oro

The cast and quality black-and-white camera work would seem to destine this film for something great but we don't get there. The problem seems to be the storyline/script which is just too familiar and predictable. Glen Ford plays a fairly well-to-do cop who feels pressured by his barbie doll young wife, Elke Sommer, to deliver even more affluence. His partner, Montalban, is more directly avaricious. Cotten is a corrupt doctor and a very used looking Rita Hayworth is Ford's ex-girlfriend from years ago.

Ford as usual, underplays but nevertheless makes you feel the cold emptiness and disillusionment of the character. Everyone else delivers well but I think we have all seen these characters, motivations and situations a hundred times before and the script does not give any room for interesting angles or surprises. We get a very dark (literally and figuratively) and gritty film but not something that is likely to grow on you. If this had been made in 1932, it would have been a far more significant film. By the mid 60s, it was tired formula.

I have always been in love, or at least enchanted, by this Burt Kennedy's surprising film from a westerner as he was. It is a tremendous and solid adaptation from a Lionel White's novel. Unfortunately never released and translated in France and in French. Many of Lionel White were not anyway. Here, Glenn Ford's performance reminds me Fred McMurray in Richard Quine's PUSHOVER, a rogue cop tale, also directed by a non crime film specialist, as Burt Kennedy; Quine was on the contrary a comedy specialist. And it is so touching to see Glenn Ford and his long time friend Rita Hayworth for the last time on screen after GILDA, LADY IN QUESTION, AFFAIR IN TRINIDAD and LOVES OF CARMEN. Yes I definitely love this underrated Burt Kennedy's film noir pulled by a tremendous acting, directing, production design, atmosphere.

Glenn Ford and Ricardo Montalban are good policemen gone bad who fall into "The Money Trap," a 1965 noir directed by Burt Kennedy. Ford plays Joe Baron, married to beautiful Lisa (Elke Sommer) who is no longer getting dividends from her father's company. Downsizing and some yard sales would seem to be in order, but instead, Joe has his eye on a mob doctor's (Joseph Cotten) safe that's filled with money. Montalban, as his partner Pete, wants in. One man has already been killed cracking the safe, and there are some surprises in store.

This film is just okay, kind of depressing, but it's notable for the performance of Rita Hayworth as the widow of the dead burglar. She looks pretty used up as her character should, but she's still a stunning woman with true star charisma and great chemistry with Ford, her old co-star. And, as someone else mentioned, how many 50-year-old women playing character roles get to shack up with the lead in a movie? Well, if anyone could, it's Rita.

Ford was an appealing star without a huge range; this character could have been mined for more depth, but he's fine in the role. Montalban is very good as his money-obsessed partner.

Worth it for Rita.

For this Post-Noir, which didn't seem aware that Film Noirs had ended, It takes former THE BIG HEAT actor Glenn Ford to make what could be an average, by-the-numbers programmer an intriguing glimpse into a planned heist of a crooked doctor's mansion wall-safe...

A man who, in Ford's opinion, murdered a thief that broke in... Part of the ingredients that makes THE MONEY TRAP a nice little page-turner with a touch of mystery, despite knowing whodunit from the get-go... Although it's never quite clear why the cops, including Ford's desperate partner Ricardo Montalban, would take such a risk, other than a payoff, each scene flows into the next in an eclectic hybrid of Noir and Soapy Melodrama...

The latter involving Ford's trophy wife, who is second billed over his once-famous GILDA co-starlet Rita Hayworth as a waitress sharing a past with the veteran cop, and she's a widow to the dead thief...

Too bad sexy blonde Elke Sommer doesn't veer into edgy moll or nefarious dame territory, or something other than a reason to provoke the main character into crossing the line: she's basically a plot-point with a perfect body. Meanwhile, Hayworth and Ford share a few scenes that could have been played by anyone; yet it's nice seeing both of them together in this B&W time-filler that's worth an idyllic afternoon viewing...

And safe seat gentleman Joseph Cotten's henchman Tom Reese is the most intriguing throughout. With a face looking like it'd been through a blender with a crocodile, he alone provides the real threat since, after all, the criminals here are the law.

Was the world ever really like this?

Pure 1965 black and white, this time machine of a crime drama takes you back to when Elkie Sommer was young, and Joseph Cotten was'nt dead. No profanity, blood or sex on the screen, but everywhere in the painlessly stereotypical screenplay. Predictable to a fault, you seem not to care it's all one big cleche. The jazzy, pre-groovy background music, a totally orignal score by Hal Schaffer, makes this crime-like thing a nostalgic romp of flat-foot flick.