with a crime-does-not-pay moral" and with a screenplay that is "fast, straightforward". He does, though, criticize the plot as having "several implausible stretches" but adds that the film's "overall speed sustains interest throughout." Shoenfeld also rates Rooney's performance as merely adequate. "As a dramatic actor", he writes, "Rooney is competent but fails to show wide range." Mae Tinée, a reviewer for the Chicago Daily Tribune also had a mixed reaction to the crime drama. Headlining her assessment "Rooney Is Cast as a Criminal in 'Quicksand'", she describes the film as "unpretentious" and expresses a decided preference for the storyline's first half when compared to its "contrived" latter half: The New York Times in its review is far less kind to the film, calling it an "uninspired melodrama" that "hammers home several unoriginal ideas in a fairly stodgy fashion." "Mr. Rooney", asserts the Times, "sums it all up when he plaintively remarks, 'Boy, am I in a mess.'" The New York Herald Tribune, agreeing with its cross-town news competitor, refers to the film as a "dreary screen saga" and judges Rooney "equally dreary in the acting department." The newspaper then describes Rooney’s character Dan as a "thoroughly unsavory character, poorly delineated by script-writer Robert Smith". Modern reception Decades after its release, Quicksand continues to draw the attention of film historians and movie fans, especially among those with a special interest in film noir. In his 2013 review, Bruce Eder for AllMovie notes that Rooney "gives what many consider to be the best performance of his career", and he considers the film to be "one of the more fascinating social documents of its era." Richard Mellor, in an earlier review for the UK-based review site Eye For Film, focused in part on the film's inherent attraction to audiences, to the appeal of being witnesses to the downward spiral of "everyman Dan Brady". It is a descent in Mellor's view that "is an enjoyable, if cloyingly predictable, fall from grace." He therefore questions in his 2009 review the validity of attaching broader issues or more complex interpretations to the film decades after its initial screening. In his opinion the film's message is quite simple and imparts a timeless, universal lesson. "It's doubtful", he contends, "whether 'Quicksand' reflects the social uncertainty of the period, as some have claimed, but it certain[ly] proves the danger that slick operators offer to a gullible dufus like Dan."