masonfisk
Noir heavyweight Charles McGraw plays an insurance adjuster out to make a killing on a score in order to get the girl of his dreams who just happens to be a femme fatale. Tight pacing & superb acting spot this B-movie gem w/a great car chase in the LA river bed to cap things off. A keeper.
blanche-2
Charles McGraw and Joan Dixon face a "Roadblock" in this 1951 film also starring Milburn Stone of "Gunsmoke" fame and Lowell Gilmore. McGraw is Joe Peters, an insurance detective who meets a beautiful, sexy woman, Diane, while traveling home by airplane after a case. The whole airplane thing was interesting in itself - spouses could fly half-price, I guess (as the Dixon character claims she and Joe are married so she can do so - she didn't have to show ID either). And though it still happens, it's less common to board from outdoors today.Joe falls hard for Diane, but she isn't interested - he's not in her league. She wants someone who will spend big money on her. One night, Joe sees her in a club where he's on an investigation, and she's with the biggest mobster in town, Kendall Webb (Gilmore). Eventually, Joe's and Diane's passion get the better of them. Webb warns Joe that Diane's enamored state of being in love with a poor man is just temporary - once the bloom is off, she'll go for the money again. Joe decides to go into partnership with Webb and steal $1.4 million that's scheduled to be on a train.McGraw, who had a big career in television until a few years before his death in 1980, is a solid noir actor - tough and good-looking. The character of Diane, however, is the one to watch. Dixon, helped by the script, gives her many layers and leaves you wondering (though you do know the answer) - was she a big chiseler or did she really care?"Roadblock" is good and interesting if implausible - Joe gets himself in deeper and deeper. It's hard to believe he would turn that dramatically that quickly. It's a minor point in a way because it's still an atmospheric noir.
tedg
Do not watch this with anyone you care about. Some movies are good. Some are bad, but among them you can often weave an interesting overlay if you are with someone who can help.But the thing has to give some basic material to work with. Cheap production and bad acting can easily be overcome, but a weak world is insurmountable. Usually, these things inherit a world from noir. That's a world rich in capricious ironies that the slightest nod can activate.This is advertised as noir, and it is as far from that as it can get. With noir, this happen to people as if the gods were playing games and arranging odd circumstances. In this story, a few people simply make mistakes that lead to their downfall.There's some promise in the setup: a floosie pretends to be a man's wife (in order to get a cheap ticket) and ends up as his wife. In between, she was a gangster's whore. The new husband is one of those pseudo-cops the movies invented in the form of "insurance investigators," and he wants to treat his (now reformed) wife to riches. So he teams with the gangster.That's a pretty strong setup, including our hubby as part of the investigative team. Butthis description is twice as interesting as the movie.Ted's Evaluation: 1 of 3 -- You can probably find something better to with this part of your life.
Mark Askew
This is a typical film noir of the period and , in my opinion, this is no bad thing. It follows all the typical patterns of a hundred other B-movies of a similar type of it's day. Shadowy photography, good man laid low by the femme fatale, a few seedy gangsters thrown in, all the ingredients are there. If you're not a big fan of noir then you might switch off after 30 minutes exclaiming that "I've seen it all before", and you'd be right. Personally I love the genre and thought this was a competently made movie with good performances by the leading actors. McGraw is perfect as the law-abiding detective seduced into lawlessness by the siren of the piece (Dixon).If you like film noir check ROADBLOCK out. If you don't then maybe this movie's not for you.
AD
