I got myself a laserdisc player a few years ago to stream and preserve some interactive disks, then I started collecting anime on it, then I decided to use it to check out some of those old films I'd always heard I'm supposed to watch, but never did. I was legitimately surprised by how much I got out of this, to the point where it's starting to make me angry that it's hard to find films this old on mainstream streaming services. In any case, I'm far from a film scholar, and what I've seen isn't close to exhaustive (for instance, I haven't yet gotten around to The Magnificent Ambersons, though I have a copy coming in the mail), but over the next day or two, I want to share which movies of that decade I think are worth seeing and why.

So the back of the LD sleeve opens its description of the film with "When you double cross a double-crosser, it's a CRISS CROSS," which is exactly the kind of cheese that got me interested. What I found was a damn well constructed, well directed heist film. Burt Lancaster stars as an armored truck driver who decides its a good idea to team up with a mob boss to rob his own truck in order to win back his ex-wife, who's now married to said mob boss. Do I need to tell you it goes poorly? This sort of silly plotline played straight enough that it becomes a tragedy is one of the things that makes classic noir so compelling to me.