Opium

I thoroughly enjoyed this picture and I had been looking for it for a long time. It's not often a motion picture can mesh all components into a first class entertainment production. This one is so completely absorbing from start to finish that I wished it wouldn't end. It was 110 minutes well spent.

It is remarkable to note the metamorphosis in Dick Powells' career, from an effeminate tenor in "42nd Street" in the early '30's to a tough-talking, gravel-voiced film noir star, beginning in the mid '40's with "Murder, My Sweet", and "Cornered", culminating in this near-masterpiece.

Can't find fault anywhere here. The story moves along at breakneck speed, and, as mentioned in my summary, if you get up to get a snack you will lose the thread of the story, so intricate and complex is the plot. If this were a book I would say I couldn't put it down.

Whatever happened to good film-making? Movies get worse and worse, but thank God for TCM. This picture is a little outdated, but just go with it and take into consideration that it was made 60 years ago. Truly, they don't make 'em like this anymore.