My pursuit of the best in noir continued with this classic from the height of the era, newly released in a beautiful DVD. Starts out with plenty of action and suspense as Mr. Big (Preston Foster) hires four ex-cons to help him in a big bank heist, while putting the frame-up on another ex-con, a deliveryman for the florist down the block from the bank. Foster and his crew dress in masks  in fact, none of them except Foster know what any of the others looks like  and drive a truck made up to look just like the florist's van, then split up and agree to meet at a to-be-specified-later date and split up the loot. Herein lies one of a few major flaws in the plot (why would any of the hoods believe Mr. Big and just accept that he's getting his share later, when none of them even knows who Mr. Big is or what he looks like?) but the film is told with such fluid pacing and style that one can forgive the holes. The twist that was the most interesting was that the floral delivery guy (John Payne) actually becomes the "hero" of the film as he becomes an amateur sleuth and hunts down the men who framed him, eventually winding up in a Mexican resort with the group and pretending to be one of them after witnessing the hood come to an unlucky end at the hands of Mexican police. For the most part this is a sunnier and funnier than usual noir, particularly light in tone when the action goes south of the border, and some of this is probably due to the simpler charms of Payne  no Bogart or Mitchum though effective enough  but also the screenplay which keeps the hoods and pretend-hood switching guns and one-upping each other often enough that it becomes more than a little comic. And the ending is fantastically blunt and dark on top of it all. One of the best noirs I've seen in a year of seeing many fine ones.