Rent Armored Car Robbery (1950)

Of Hoods and Trunks - Armored Car Robbery review by CH

Armored Car Robbery (1950) appears to concern exactly that. As in any heist, what counts is not so much the haul as the aftermath. A small fortune has been taken from a Los Angeles racetrack as part of a meticulously-plotted raid but, for all the work being done amidst gas, something goes wrong. The gang is spotted, chase is given, bullets ring out, two of them hitting flesh through windscreens.

Minutes into this, and time is already catching up with those who thought that money could bring a better life across the border. This was made by Richard Fleischer two years before his masterly Narrow Margin with which it shares pace and an eye for those hours between dusk and dawn when shadows conceal so much more.

Charles McGraw is a policeman out to avenge a colleague killed in the shoot-out and gets hard on the trail of gang leader William Talman who, of course, is smitten with a burlesque dancer (Adele Jergens) whose on-stage scenes are given added heat by her being already married to another member of the gang.

Filled with now-vanished curvaceous automobiles, any number of location scenes, and several moments at the game appears to be up. For all the dextrous performances, the start of this is the camera which, at every moment, brings a sense of the shades between the black and white of order and law - and there is a surprising reference in the dialogue to the young Norman Mailer. Watch a b-movie and you can be so much better rewarded than items first presented at red-carpet showings.