Review – Double Indemnity

This noir classic is very much a creature of its time. If nothing else, it’s hard to watch beloved TV dad and Disney regular Fred MacMurray playing a villainous anti-hero. Then there’s the dialogue, no doubt biting and innovative in 1944 but now more than a little cliché. But despite the dating, this is still an entertaining piece of movie-making. We all go into it knowing that the salesman and scheming woman plotting to murder her husband for insurance money are going to come to no good, especially when the plan becomes more complicated than necessary due to the need to kill hubby on a train in order to bring a double-indemnity clause into effect. But even the predictable outcome doesn’t detract from the pleasure of watching Edward G. Robinson as a claim investigator taking the scheme apart piece by piece. Worth seeing