I liked this film but I got spoiled with the first 20-30 minutes. It started off so intense that I thought this was going to be fantastic: an incredibly edgy film noir. It still wound up good overall, but it never lived up to that great beginning.<br /><br />The story slows down a bit once the scene shifts from the heist in Kansas City to the rendezvous of the bandits down in Mexico. It has as a full lulls here and there but still does enough things right to keep your interest. <br /><br />What it does is right is emphasize two things that a good film noir provides: tension and paranoia. All the crooks are assembled in one spot but only the boss knows who the others are. They don't know what any of the gang members look like since all of the thieves had to wear masks throughout the planning and execution of the crime. However, since the boss hired them, he knows them all. Also, down in Mexico, the good guy in the film, "Joe Rolfe" (John Payne) is an impostor, pretending he's "Peter Harris," one of the crooks who got caught by the cops and knocked off just before heading south. Rolfe doesn't know, however, that the boss knows he's a phony. Payne's character got unfairly fingered in the robbery so he's down there trying to clear his name. All of this may sound complicated, but it isn't once you watch the film. Suffice to say it's interesting to see how all these guys slowly figure out who's who. <br /><br />I thought "Tim Foster," played by Preston Foster, was the best character in the film, probably because he was right in the middle of everything. He was a bitter ex-cop and the brains behind the whole scheme, which could easily have been pulled off . He was just wasn't lucky, because he had a great plan.<br /><br />One of the people he had to fool was his daughter, who surprises him down in Mexico and further complicates the situation. Colleen Gray plays "Helen Foster," but she doesn't really come into the story much until the last half hour. Her character did one implausible thing after another, things NO woman would do and softened the rough edges of this movie, which was a mistake. "Helen" wasn't even needed in this film. It would have been better as a straight male- only tough film noir.<br /><br />Speaking of tough: how about this "Rogue's gallery:" Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand? Now there are three good faces for this genre of film. They were the other gang members<br /><br />There are a number of holes in this story, but you have to ignore them and go along for the ride which, for the most part, is a good one. It's recommended for all film noir buffs.