Rent Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

An engaging slow ride in the noir fast lane - Drive a Crooked Road review by KW

Mickey Rooney is Eddie Shannon, shy and mild-mannered car mechanic and wannabe racing driver. Eddie is no hit with the ladies until Barbara Matthews turns up to make his heart go faster than a Grand Prix winner. She's setting him up though, for she has friends planning a bank robbery and they need a fast driver. Whether he likes it or not, Eddie is taking a trip down the fast lane....

Mickey Rooney gives a tremendous, understated performance in this movie, which is in Volume 1 of Indicator's Columbia Noir box set series. The film is well-written by Blake Edwards with none of the jokes that featured in his later movies but plenty of the Malibu locations that did. The slow burn allows the audience to get to know Eddie - his life is simple, he deserves more but it's a dark night of fast cars and gunplay and this is a film noir so don't count on a jolly song and dance routine with Judy Garland type of ending. Those days were over!

Extras on the blu-ray disc include an introduction by Martin Scorsese, audio interview with Mickey Rooney, film commentary, a bizarre showbiz featrette with Mickey Rooney and an even more bizarre Three Stooges short in which they play airforce car mechanics who inadvertently become spies after accidentally hiding in a bomb which is then dropped on Nazi Germany. In other words, the main feature is the real draw.

Fifties Noir. - Drive a Crooked Road review by Steve

After Mickey Rooney found stardom as an MGM child actor in the 1930s, he struggled for a second act. He was still cast as small town American teenager Andy Hardy into middle age. His most interesting venture is a pair of ‘50s noirs in which he played honest mechanics duped by glamorous femme fatales.

The other is Quicksand (1950), but this is better, a slender heist film in which the diminutive grease monkey is tempted to be the wheels on a bank job by a gangster’s sexy, sweet talking moll (Dianne Foster). She’s way out of his league, which is often emphasised by how much taller she is.

The preparation for the robbery is paramount, with the driver motivated more by loneliness than greed. The actual getaway is brief though effective. But nice guy Eddie has a huge scar from an old head injury which alerts us to the possibility that he might prove a little less predictable than he seems.

It’s a routine crime melodrama, but the best performance of Rooney’s career. It’s startling how the ex-juvenile star is demeaned in the dialogue, for being short and a sexual loser. Foster is fine too and looks so potent in her swimsuit that it’s understandable she got even Andy Hardy to go bad.