Homicídio

This is a totally unrealistic film. It is full of foolishness, illogical and stupid actions. Absolutely impossible behaviors and dialogues of real people. A squalor in all categories.

This begins auspiciously but becomes implausible.

Still, it's always a treat to run into Robert Alda. And the character actress playing the landlady is the real McCoy, as are the farm folk earlier in the movie.

So many noirs are lost and forgotten, I tip my hat -- fedora, of course -- to the major cable channel that unearthed this one! May it do so with many more.

An itinerant laborer is found hanging by the rafters in his Los Angeles boardinghouse room and the cops are ready to wrte it off as a suicide. All but Detective Robert Douglas who says an ex-Navy man wouldn't have done sch a sloppy job with knots.

A book of matches takes him to a resort hotel where there was another murder that the locals have listed as an accident. of course that's not right either.

The big problem with homicide is that there is no suspense so we know that it is murder and by two men. We don't know who's in charge, but that cat's out of the bag soon too.

Despite a lack of suspense there are some good performances from Robert Douglas, Helen Westcott, and Robert Alda in the leads.

An engaging Robert Douglas ("The Fountainhead") is L. A. police detective Michael Landers, a man sharp enough to figure that the recent suicide of a war veteran and wannabe ranch hand was most likely a murder instead. His evidence is slim, but he has a gut feeling about the matter. He convinces his bosses to let him go on "vacation", and goes out of his jurisdiction to investigate the matter further.

Overall, this B level crime picture from Warner Bros. (not really a noir) is decidedly minor, but it does provide undemanding entertainment for fans of the genre. It goes far on the talents of Douglas, who usually played bad guys in bigger films, and the loveliness of Helen Westcott ("The Gunfighter"), the cigarette salesgirl who lends him a hand. The fight scene in the desert, late in the film, is a highlight. The supporting cast fares pretty well: Robert Alda ("Rhapsody in Blue") as bartender Andy, Monte Blue ("Key Largo") as the local sheriff, Warren Douglas ("The Inner Circle") as the "suicide", Richard Benedict ("Ace in the Hole") and John Harmon ("King of the Underworld") as thugs, James Flavin ("King Kong") as Boylan, and especially Esther Howard ("Murder, My Sweet"), with whom Douglas has good chemistry, as the landlady.

Overall, this will show lovers of vintage B crime movies a pretty good time, even if the story / mystery is not that great. At least, like so many pictures of this kind from this era, it gets to the point pretty succinctly, not going on any longer than it has to.

Six out of 10.

A serviceable police procedural from 1949, Homicide veers from the mildly absorbing to the silly. Its opening shows promise: A drifter just out of the Navy, looking for work as a farm hand, stumbles across a murder in an orange grove. The killers pay him off to testify that he witnessed an accident, then dispose of him too, making it look like he hanged himself in a cheap Los Angeles boarding house (its landlady is Esther Howard, best remembered as Jessie Florian in Murder, My Sweet).

One police detective (Robert Douglas) thinks there's something fishy and, going by a book of matches and a saccharin tablet, takes a leave of absence to pursue his investigation to a desert spa, where the bartender (Robert Alda) suffers from diabetes. A clue! The plot involves an underground wire used by a nationwide gambling syndicate. But Douglas, operating on his own, finds that his cover is burned and his life is in danger....

Homicide's worst misstep is in the casting of its lead. The ostentatiously British Douglas (40 at the time and looking comfortably middle-aged) is passed off as a Canadian to somehow explain his working for the LAPD. A better explanation would be why they hired a detective who's thick as a brick. The most entertaining part of the movie is listening to him try to sling American slang in his brittle B.B.C. accent; it's like watching a movie with subtitles.