JohnHowardReid
Beautifully photographed on many actual Mexican locations by Jack Draper, this is a fascinating, fast-moving little noir mystery thriller from director Robert Wise. The stars, William Lundigan and Jacqueline White, are excellent. In a difficult role, Lundigan never gave a more personable, skillful performance, while Jacqueline White is so charming and so delightfully animated, it's hard to believe that she was nearing the end of her movie career. The villain here is played by Ricardo Cortez with nothing like the same subtlety as Lundigan and White lend to their characters. Outstanding support players it was also good to see include sexy Jacqueline Dalya in a suitably flashy role as Dolores, and burly Eduardo Casado, who contributes a nice bit of business to his part as the police commandant. In her only movie appearance, Thalia Draper, the daughter of ace Mexican-based photographer, Jack Draper, can be glimpsed as Floracita.
dbdumonteil
William Lundigan complained about always being given and accepting lousy parts;it was not always true : "follow me quietly" by Richard Fleischer he made the following year is a really good thriller and he had a truly great director.In "mystery in Mexico " he 's got Robert Wise !Wise retained flair for film noir ("the captive city" "odds against tomorrow" and "the set -up");it shows in the very first sequence and in the Mexican family's house in the final scenes;the rest of the movie ,unfortunately,fluctuates between comedy (Lundigan and the supporting cast do not seem to take the story seriously;Jacqueline White has different ways to give "short cuts" );and we don't care about the necklace (probably bought in a dime store).All in all,this is pretty entertaining stuff if you do not ask too much and the actors have a certain spontaneity,particularly the lead himself.
sol-
An early film from Robert Wise, the much acclaimed director of different science fiction and musical films, this is quite different stuff to what he would later be best known for, and in all honestly it is noticeably inferior too. It is far from being a poor film, but the production is far off being great too, with a quite lifeless, underdeveloped central romance and not too much to get excited over in terms of the mystery plot and technical credits. To fans of its director, the film will certainly be of some interest, but to other viewers it might well sit as mediocre: neither really good nor really bad.
bmacv
There's not much of one -- a mystery, that is -- but that's S.O.P for these programmers that run a longish hour. But Robert Wise keeps things brisk and watchable, which isn't to be sneezed at. It's about an insurance investigator (William Lundigan) who follows a suspect (Jacqueline White) south of the border while trying to solve a jewelry theft. The whole shebang was filmed in the studios in Mexico City, with a largely native cast; among them is Ricardo Cortez, a big Latin heart-throb from the earliest talkies (when he was often paired with Bebe Daniels).
This seems a bit of a comedown for Wise, who the previous year had helmed the excellent noir Born to Kill, starring Clare Trevor and Lawrence Tierney, and for that film we can almost forgive him for The Sound of Music, many years later.
AD
