This vaulted to the top of my list of favorite films noir the second it was over.<br /><br />This truly stylish and excellent little crime thriller stars John Payne as an ex-con who's framed for being involved with a bank robbery he had nothing to do with. Fueled by a sense of wronged justice, he tracks down the real culprits, who have met down in Mexico for the money exchange. The plot gets much more intricate than that, though, when it turns out that the boss of the operation, an ex-cop gone bad, is planning to double cross the other members of the team and collect the reward money for himself. And it gets more intricate when Payne falls for the boss's daughter, who has come down to visit him at his tropical getaway.<br /><br />Many of the usual noir touches are present in this film: the anti-hero who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time; the hard-boiled tough-guy patter; the blurred lines between the law and the criminals. The film clips by at a tense pace, and it's an awful lot of fun.<br /><br />Grade: A