Destination Murder

Horendous acting, bad execution but a rather interesting plot. Well, it's still a "NO" on my part but it was watchable.

One of the rare noirs with the gender roles reversed, with Mackenzie playing the out of her depth amateur detective trying to solve a murder and an homme fatale trying to pull her strings. It's a bit rough at times, Mackenzie has a good screen presence but her acting could be better. Otherwise it's an intriguing web of mystery with excellent execution right up to the ending. There's nothing particularly impressive about it, but it hits the right notes and the little touches add up.

Punk rock.

There are a few nice touches: the heavy who likes his brutality accompanied by "Moonlight Sonata", the way every major character is duplicitous, the third act reveal, the performances by "Steve Gibson's Nightcaps". But that's about it. This film goes through the motions of noir but lacks punch. It all feels very rote and doesn't bring anything new to the table. Pretty bad acting, too, and with some shoddy plotting. Watchable, yes, but not much more than that.

Destination Murder (1950) tries to be more clever than it is. Therefore a lot of what happens feels overly naive and plays out too convenient. The twist with Albert Dekker's character was a nice touch, specially considering the type of roles he usually plays are the boss type, but besides that it was a average murder story of the B-variety.