Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

utgard14 Amnesiac war hero Eddie Rice (John Payne) searches Los Angeles for clues to who he is. He quickly discovers he is, or was, a not-so-nice guy. Sonny Tufts plays his former friend, a rough & tough crime boss. He's probably the most memorable performance in the movie, though nothing groundbreaking. Ellen Drew is the embittered ex-wife. Rhys Williams is a suspicious cop. The plot's a little similar to the superior Somewhere In the Night. Robert Florey's direction is nice. Ditto for John Alton's cinematography. Script could've used some punching up. It's not classic but it's a good time-killer for noir fans.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Shot up WWII veteran Eddie Rice, John Payne, suffering from amnesia due to a severe brain injury in the Pacific theater of war wants to find himself or who he really is by traveling to L.A the place he last remembers he was living at before his memory went blank. It's there that Eddie's past catches up with him in the fact he's not really Eddie Rice war hero but Eddie Riccardi career criminal. With his former friend mobster Vincent Alexander, Sunny Tufts, finding out that his good friend Eddie is back in town he decides to pay him a visit as well as pay him back for ratting him out to the police that landed him two years behind bars.Eddie who has no memory of what he did and what happened to him the last five years plays it all by ear slowly getting to know what kind of person he was as well as who his friends, or are very few, and enemies, who are in the hundreds, really are. We the audience go along with Eddie in his mission to find out who he really is that has him framed by Vincent in a murder that Vincent committed of L.A cop Let. Joe Williams, Rhys Williams, who was about to be run him in by him for a previous murder. Through all this the blank looking and not knowing what's going on Eddie Rice/Riccardi gets deeper and deeper into trouble without even knowing it. It's Eddie's old lady hat-check girl Nina Martin, Ellen Drew, who divorced him three years ago and works in Vincent's night club who fills in blanks in his brain to not just who he is but what he's done over the last five lost years of his life.***SPOILERS*** Now with his memory restored Eddie plans to have it out with Vincent in his hideout that his gimpy associated Petey, Percy Helton, uses a front as a paint distributorship. The end of this very confusing movie has Vince and Eddie battling it out with a badly wounded Petey, who was shot by Vincent's thugs, trying to save himself and his pet cat Samson from getting killed in the cross-fire between the two and about two dozen policemen who are on the scene. Petey in fact saves Samson but ends up losing his life when Vincent who he missed putting a bullet in his back returned the favor blasting Petey between the eyes. It was Vince who got the worst of it when instead of surrendering to the police, who had him surrounded, decided to blast it out with them with him having already used up all his ammunition.

Alex da Silva John Payne (Eddie) has left the army with a piece of shrapnel in his brain that has given him amnesia. He returns to LA to see if he can remember the life that he led prior to joining the army but he is warned to leave town by Lieutenant Rhys Williams (Joe) when he is spotted on arrival. He meets up with Ellen Drew (Nina) who betrays his whereabouts to gangster Sonny Tufts (Vince) and a couple of his henchman who also get to Payne, give him a pasting, and give him 24 hours to get out of town. At this point, you'd think he'd leave. Well, he doesn't.The film reminded me of "Somewhere In The Night" from 1946 starring John Hodiak. Both films are similar in that they tackle the topic of an amnesiac going back to his home town to try and discover his past life. Both films are time-passers but not any more than that. In this effort, I found that I never really cared what happened to our leading man and felt nothing when he was beaten up or shot. The rest of the cast aren't particularly enthralling with Sonny Tufts and his henchmen as the standout characters. The plot is stupid in that Payne doesn't leave town when he should but it's not as stupid as the storyline for "Somewhere In The Night".The story has no real surprises and starts to drag towards the end, especially when small time crook Percy Helton (Petey) gets involved. This isn't giving the plot away because it is so obvious that this is going to happen, but when Percy gets shot, both my wife and I simultaneously cheered. His character seems to be pronounced "Peedy" but "Paedy" would be more appropriate given his look. He is involved in a very corny ending.Amnesia must be contagious. I only watched the film yesterday and already the signs are there. It's OK to watch once but I wouldn't recommend it.

Robert J. Maxwell It's another one of those inexpensive mystery/gangster movies about an amnesic veteran who returns from the war and tries to recover his identity or, if he still has his memory, tries to figure out what's been happening in his absence. It's all pretty veiled. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Here, it's just unexceptional.John Payne discovers in Los Angeles that he has a shady past. But what else can you expect? (He turns out to have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine?) It's really another B feature with a careless plot and performances that are in no way interesting. Want an example of an unimaginable coincidence? He's just been released from an Army hospital. The psychiatrist has advised him to go to Los Angeles where he enlisted. That's the only thing they know about him. He steps off the train in beautiful Union Station. Two men are standing around and one turns to him and says, "Hey, Eddy!" A few minutes later he leaves them to make a phone call. He's spotted from across the street by his wife, who just happens to be at that particular point in space and time.Sonny Tufts is the most interesting performer in the picture. He usually is. He wears his debauchery on his face as if flying a flag. "Wow, have I been a bad boy!" I didn't find it worth sitting through. If I wanted a decent amnesia movie, I'd watch "The Bourne Identity" again. Someone else might enjoy it more. Judging from the user ratings, someone has.