Criss Cross + The Underneath

One must touch base with film noir from time to time, if one loves film at all. As a genre to embody the mythos of motion pictures it is second only to horror. Little holes made by a snub nose .38 in the spider hand of a dame bleed emulsion.

Criss Cross (1949) is a sufficiently nasty from-the-files crime brief badly smudged by an all-thumbs cast, but its semi-classic status is justified by a tautly Hitchcock third act and unexpectedly brutal finale. Burt Lancaster never was good for much in his beefcake heyday but I reserve a certain fondness due to his December portrayal of Doc 'Moonlight' Graham in Field of Dreams. Steven Soderbergh's 1995 remake is a bit of an oddity in the Soderbergh catalogue. Re-titled The Underneath, it might have fulfilled the languishing promise of the original screenplay had Soderbergh known at the time to segregate his arthouse doodling from the professionally tailored thrill. Instead the flick seems to be the mistake that taught him the lesson. The sin of pride. Where should be clockwork fatalism in bowing service to the gods of noir the direction sadly falters, fails to observe the rites, straying into a self-indulgent murk of convoluted chronology and stasis. Film noir is a high calling and unforgiving at that. In a way I'm actually relieved to discover that Steven is only human. (All hail the Coen brothers!)

Alison Elliott plays the femme fatale with a hardened set to her pretty face and a cold desolation in the eyes. Bad bad news, this girl. Not quite sociopathic but close enough for jazz. Those slightly puffy lower lids remind me of Peter Sarsgaard, who seems pleasant enough in interviews as he sips coffee and casually guts a cat. Taking over for Lancaster, the leading sap is portrayed by the preposterously soap opera puss of Peter Gallagher, famous son of Wooly Willy and Mrs Potato Head. His occasional willingness to be mocked and suffer misfortune onscreen helps take the edge off my need to work over that brow with a belt sander.