Drive a Crooked Road

A bit of a noir-by-numbers, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy the thrill ride of Drive a Crooked Road. Sure, the plot is the basic building blocks of a film noir, but it’s nice little B-level entry in Mickey Rooney’s filmography that careens through its brief running time with no fat on the bones and a strange little ending. I doubt anyone will ever mistake this for a stellar entry in the noir canon, but it’s a nice little minor discovery.

Rooney plays a lonely auto mechanic that becomes the patsy for a femme fatale (Dianne Foster) and her wannabe bank robber beau (Kevin McCarthy). You can guess where it’s going: femme fatale temps Rooney, introduces him to bank robber beau, and then slowly introduces him to their criminal plans. It zips through these story beats with surprising economy and a slow burning performance from Rooney.

No megawatt theatrics from Rooney here, but an authentic depiction of loneliness, world-weariness, and romantic isolation. He makes a great dupe, and I watched this as a double with Babes in Arms. If you ever wanted to see a demonstration of Rooney’s range as an actor, then I couldn’t think of a better or odder pairing. The effervescent, eternally youthful performer that chewed the scenery is nowhere to be found here.

Where Drive a Crooked Road stumbles is in its ending. Foster’s femme fatale gets a complete arc as she grows a conscience and feels terrible about the entire plot and helping to set it into motion. Foster’s biggest transformation is in her relationship with Rooney. Her revelation that she used him but feels terrible about it is a nice payoff from the private moments we’ve seen so far, but Rooney’s dupe never gets one. He seems to stumble into his comeuppance instead of engineering his revenge. It’s an upending of noir’s conventions while also feeling a bit like a spinout near the finish line.