Review – Murder, My Sweet

Rare indeed is the movie that’s so completely murdered by one actor. It took some guts for RKO to give in to Dick Powell’s pleas for a role in something besides a stage-door musical. Sometimes a wild gamble like this pays off. Not this time. Powell is just as stiff and goofy here as he ever was in the candy corn roles that made him famous, and in a hard-boiled detective story the guy works about as well as ice cream and liverwurst. Some of the dialogue is pretty wretched stuff as well, though it’s hard to say if it would have been better if Humphrey Bogart or some other film noir veteran had played the role. Otherwise this is a good movie. The supporting cast is solid and the technical quality is good, sometimes even innovative by 1944 standards. If not for the bad casting decision, this might well have been worth seeing. Mildly amusing