More noir. Directed by Charles Vidor. Rita Hayworth (Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Lady from Shanghai (1947)) leads, mostly desperately trying to catch Glenn Ford's attention after something unexplained went direly wrong with their previous romance. Inexplicably she turns up married to George Macready (a steely, Germanic performance not far from his turn as the General in Paths of Glory (1957)) who is running an illicit casino in Buenos Aires and has hired Ford as his number-two man. Steven Geray (Spellbound (1945), In a Lonely Place (1950), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953, etc. etc.)) as the bloke in the gents who does more than you want is somehow omniscient.
Schematically the plot is not terrible (it's not so far from Casablanca (1942)) but the script (IMDB says it was heavily doctored) was. The characters are generally inscrutable, the timeline doesn't really work, and who really cares about the international tungsten trade anyway? It's all a bit frustrating as there's enough there for it to have been something.
Bosley Crowther at the time: crude and nonsensical.
