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Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Dir: Phil Karlson

The mysterious Tim Foster (Preston Foster) arranges to rob a payroll van with 3 other men, Pete Harris (Jack Elam), Boyd Kane (Neville Brand) and Tony Romano (Lee Van Cleef).
All wear masks and do not know each other's identities.
They set up an ex con, Joe Rolfe (John Payne), to take the fall for their heist by using an identical florist van to escape in that Joe drives.
Although he is eventually cleared, when the real getaway van is discovered and no evidence can be found, Joe has lost his job and the publicity means no one will employ him.
Bent on revenge Rolfe vows to find the men who set him up.

But when the trail leads to Mexico, where the men plan to meet to split the cash using playing cards to identify each other, things become complicated.
Tim Foster turns out to be an embittered ex Cop living in the Mexican resort chosen for the meet and he plans to use his links to the FBI to set up the robbers and ditch the hot stolen cash for the large, and clean, reward that has been offered.
So when Joe arrives in Mexico he is once again caught up in a case of mistaken identity and caught up with the gang he has come to take his revenge out on…..

Full of deep shadows, smoke filled rooms and hardboiled dialogue "Kansas City Confidential" is a sadly little known noir thriller that boasts a clever plot, a great cast and a truly effective lead performance by one time musical actor John Payne.
Payne barnstorms his way through the movie as he ruthlessly (and very angrily) hunts down those who have wronged him.
In a film of many highlights as far as Payne's performance goes one of the best is his explosion of anger and frustration after being told by the Cops he can go with no charge. "Thanks! For NOTHING"!

Karlson fills the first half of the film with some classic black and white, big City hoodlum images. A great sequence in an illegal gambling den, when Joe confronts an unsuspecting Pete (a skinny but still effectively craggy Elam), is a text book example of the power of a well implemented visual set-up as the two men exchange hard stares through swirling cigarette smoke. Superbly atmospheric stuff.

The wonderfully gritty Kansa City setting is sadly missed when the film switches to Mexico but the presence of a typically tough Neville Brand and a fantastically arrogant Lee Van Cleef (looking very young and with a full head of jet black hair) make sure the hard-edge seen in the concrete jungle carries on into the sun drenched Mexico.

A sub plot involving Joe and Foster's Daughter Helen (Collen Gray, from Stanley Kubrick's best film "The Killing") slows things down a bit and things do become overly sedate in the pacing department as people sit around the resort (especially compared to the sequences in Kansas City) but for the most part it manages to keep its hardboiled qualities thanks to the truly intense performance by Payne.
Sadly the orchestral music score is typically old fashioned, overwrought and interchangeable and either swamps scenes or fades into the background.

The end is perhaps too upbeat for the roughness that has come before it, though it does have a couple of nice (and ironic) twists, but the rest of the movie is so good for the most part that all is forgiven.

Well worth searching out.