Ai confini del delitto

If you like your film noir declawed and defanged, then Henry Levin's Two of a Kind is the movie for you. The vexing part is that it starts off strong, keeping the viewer off balance. Lizabeth Scott is scouring the continent looking for a particular man. Her quest takes her from a Chicago orphanage to the carny circuit to the Department of the Navy in Washington; she finally finds him, working in a bingo parlor, in Los Angeles where she started.

He's Edmond O'Brien, and she's after him because he fits the bill for a con job that she and her lover Alexander Knox have been hatching for a long time. A wealthy old couple has nobody to leave their fortune to, because their son vanished when he was only three years old. Knox, their attorney, and Scott are grooming O'Brien as a ringer to show up and claim the inheritance, which they'll all split. There are a couple of catches. For one, the kid lost the tip of his finger in a childhood accident, but since he can cash in his own fingertip for millions, O'Brien falls in with the scheme. The other is that Scott, to Knox's chagrin, starts to go sweet on O'Brien.

Up to the scene when Scott smashes O'Brien's finger in a car door, so he'll have reason to have the first two joints amputated, Two of a Kind promises to be low-down and unsentimental. But the movie's tone suffers an incapacitating fracture with the arrival of Terry Moore, as a niece of the old couple and the patsy through which O'Brien will secure his entry into the family's affections. (She's a vapid dilettante whose hobby is collecting `causes;' falling for no-good men and trying to reform them seems to be one of them.)

O'Brien gains admittance to the family; his candor about his raffish past puts him in good stead. But when the pot of gold seems just within reach, the patriarch drops a bombshell: He won't leave a cent to his newfound son on the grounds that it would ruin him. This prompts Knox to rachet up the swindle to the next level - arranging an early send-off for his unwitting benefactors. Scott and O'Brien demur, but by this time they're in too deep....

The dark tone of the opening returns briefly, but it's too late and doesn't last. Despite that brutal finger-smashing, there's a squeamishness to the movie that doesn't let it pursue the expectations it raises. The insipid ending opens regretful speculation: Whatever happened to the Lizabeth Scott of Too Late For Tears, the Edmond O'Brien of 711 Ocean Drive, and the Henry Levin who directed Night Editor?

Lightweight noir about a con where Edmond O'Brien pretends to be the long-lost son of a millionaire. The movie is fun but never goes to the dark places it seems to hint at. Lizabeth Scott is set up to be a great femme fatale (the scene where she ropes O'Brien into the scheme and gets him to make a brutal sacrifice is the highlight of the film) but her character fizzles out. Fans of con artist flicks will be disappointed as the plan doesn't have the intricate details that make them enjoyable. Although it's an enjoyable film (O'Brien especially), it all wraps up far too neatly and without much sizzle. I did enjoy the sleazy subtext of Terry Moore as the "good girl" who gets turned on by bad guys. When she meets O'Brien, you can read "rape fantasy" all over her face.

Edmond O'Brien, Lizabeth Scott, Alexander Knox, and Terry Moore star in "Two of a Kind" from 1951.

Brandy Kirby (Scott) and an attorney, Vincent Mailer (Knox) for a wealthy man, William McIntyre find the perfect person in Lefty Farrell (O'Brien) to pretend to be the long-lost son of McIntyre's. He will then inherit $10 million, and since McIntyre and his wife are old, there won't be long to wait until he inherits.

Brandy seduces Lefty into taking the job. In order to do it, he has to lose part of his little finger, as the McIntyre's son did. A friend of Brandy's (MooreO who is the McIntyre's niece, introduces him to them when she sees his finger and asks questions. It's looking good that Lefty will be accepted as the son and inherit a fortune.

I had a few problems with this noir. The writer tried to lighten it up with the presence and perky acting of Terry Moore, which was way out of place and came off as overdone.

Lefty is supposed to be a real charmer and a chick magnet. I'm sorry, Edmond O'Brien? Good actor but hardly oozing with sex and good looks. Under contract at that time were William Holden and Glenn Ford. I doubt many women would have turned them down.

Lizabeth Scott, one of the noir queens, looked great in her gorgeous clothes and shorter hair and, with that smoky voice of hers, was very effective. Knox really didn't have much to do. O'Brien was good as usual but for me, wrong for the part.

Without the Moore character and better casting of Lefty, the film would have been stronger. Instead, it was just passable.

Two of a Kind is directed by Henry Levin and written by James Edward Grant, James Gunn and Lawrence Kimble. It stars Edmond O'Brien, Lizabeth Scott, Terry Moore, Alexander Knox, Griff Barnett, Robert Anderson and Virginia Brissac. Music is by George Duning and cinematography by Burnett Guffey.

Plot has O'Brien, Scott and Knox try to con a rich old couple that their son, who disappeared when he was three, has resurfaced in the older body of O'Brien. Thus they hope to get the $10 million inheritance due to the heir upon the death of the parents…

It all starts so very well, Scott's sultry blonde hunts out O'Brien's shady player to do a major con and he falls for her feminine whiles hook line and sinker, even agreeing to have his little finger mangled in a car door for the con cause. Sadly this is where the picture falls apart and unfurls in a lightweight manner.

Interesting possibilities are ignored, such as Moore's sprightly niece character who likes to straighten out bad men (it ends up playing as something that should be in a Cary Grant screwball) and a murderous plot that threatens to make the ending more lively (by this time the O'Brien/Scott pairing has become sickly nice), to leave us with what turns out to be a quite repugnant ending.

Guffey's black and white photography is crisp but just like the film itself, it really isn't noir at all. Levin and the cast try hard, but saddled with an unadventurous screenplay it rounds out as a minor B movie of little substance. 5/10

The two of a kind of this film's title are Edmond O'Brien and Lizabeth Scott, two schemers who aren't above their fair share of dirty dealings but who draw the line at murder.

The implausible scheme in this one involves O'Brien posing as the lost son of a millionaire who will cash in on the millionaire's inheritance once he dies and split it with Scott and the millionaire's attorney (played by Alexander Knox), who engineers the whole thing. The plot of course unravels, as plots usually do in movies like this, until talk of murder comes up, as it invariably does. One murder is planned, another is attempted, but all ends well for our bad-but-not-so-bad-that-we-don't-kind-of-like-them lovers.

My favorite thing about this movie is that the plot these crooks hatch has a thousand holes in it from the beginning, but the movie acknowledges that and makes use of them. For once, the movie is as smart as we are.

Terry Moore has a large role as the millionaire's niece, a do-gooder who is determined to find the sugar at the middle of O'Brien's bitter pill. Her appearance in the film brings a strong comic element to it (she's turned on by being robbed at gunpoint) and keeps things refreshingly off kilter. There are hints at romantic comedy mixed in with brutal scenes, like the one where O'Brien allows his finger to be smashed in a car door so that doctors will have to amputate it. I suppose fans of true noirs may be disappointed that this film is far too light overall to truly earn the title, but there's a lot of fun to be had if you can look past that.

Grade: B