Criss Cross

Steve comes back to Los Angeles driving an armoured car and finds his ex wife Anna in a nightclub. She is with a gangster now. He starts seeing her again, and when they are caught together he improvises a story to save himself: they were meeting to plan the robbery of his own truck. The lie turns real and the job gets planned. Robert Siodmak builds the structure on that lie as well, opening in the middle of the heist and then going back to show how the man walked himself into it. Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo and Dan Duryea star. One small detail grew over time: the uncredited young actor dancing a rumba with De Carlo in the club is Tony Curtis, who met Lancaster on this set and worked with him several more times over the years. Its flaw is that the characters' decisions are motivated emotionally but a few of them arrive too fast. Who it is for: viewers who love classic noir and inevitable endings. Who it is not for: anyone hoping for a way out.