Director Edward Dmytryk was known for creating film noirs prior to being blacklisted in the 50s due to a past association with the Communist party. Ironically, Dymtryk quit the party after the writer of the first draft, John Wexley, lambasted him at a Communist party meeting over changes he made to the script, toning down the pro-Socialist message. You would think that people in the government after World War II, would have been pleased with the basic premise of the film: that Nazi war criminals were still alive and hiding in such places as South America. But the "party" line was that the war was over and the Fascists had been defeated; any suggestion that this nascent bunch of deplorables were plotting to rise again was decidedly politically incorrect. Despite the unusual theme for a film noir (and it's debatable how much of a "film noir" this film is), Cornered proved to be a rather lame potboiler in its execution. The narrative actually begins decently. Dick Powell plays Canadian RCAF flyer Lawrence Gerard, a former POW, who returns to France to find out who was responsible for the death of his bride of 20 days, a member of the French resistance. His father-in-law Rougon informs him that it's Marcel Jarnac, an official in the Vichy government who collaborated with the Germans (Jarnac is officially declared dead but Rougon doesn't believe it but has no idea where he is). Gerard finds a tantalizing clue in the freshly burned out office of Jarnac's associate--an envelope addressed to Jarnac's purported wife. Gerard ultimately attempts to find the widow in Buenos Aires. It is at this point that the narrative falls apart given the totally unlikely course of action Gerard takes. The Canadian enters the bad guys' lair under his own name making it quite clear he's looking for Jarnac and intends to take him down. In real life, such a person would probably last a scant week in such an environment before bumped off by the unsavory thugs he's looking for. To add insult to injury, Powell is not the charming, cynical private eye Phillip Marlowe in the clever adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell my Lovely (called Murder, By Sweet in the American release, also directed by Dmytryk a year earlier in 1944), but a decidedly unlikable hothead. Gerard is approached by the portly Melchior Incza (played by character actor Walter Slezak) who is later revealed to be working for Jarnac. Incza offers his services as a guide around town but Gerard is determined to find Jarnac on his own. Gerard soon meets Jarnac's alleged widow at a party where he also meets Tomas Camargo, a fascist connected to Jarnac, and Camargo's uncle, lawyer Manuel Santana, who turns out to be operating an anti-Fascist group, tracking Jarnac on his own. After hounding Mme Jarnac, she finally reveals to Gerard that she's being paid to pretend she's Jarnac's wife and she's actually afraid of him. A good deal of the convoluted plot is taken up with Gerard's ruse--pretending to have an entire dossier on Jarnac which he threatens to release to the press unless Camargo agrees to reveal Jarnac's whereabouts (Gerard only has one signed title page of the dossier which he found in the burned out ruins of Jarnac's associate back in France, which he gives to Incza). The climax leads Gerard to an old meeting place of Jarnac's where he finally reveals himself (and murders Incza in the process). You can pretty much guess what happens next--a struggle to the death between Gerard and Jarnac with Jarnac ending up on the losing side of Gerard's set of multiple (fatal) punches. A paper detailing Camargo's connection to Jarnac ends up in Santana's hands, who plans to reveal it in court, not only to get Gerard off the hook for the Jarnac homicide, but to expose Camargo's organization in Buenos Aires. Despite the worthy warning of a Fascist resurgence, the Nazi villains here are a decidedly generic bunch. They really are a bunch of stock characters from the typical murder mystery of the day. With the one-note Powell and an overly talky plot, Cornered fails to come close to the much more worthy film noirs of its day.

CORNERED is an oddity. It's a cross between a War era espionage thriller and film noir. It takes place in several countries - but, not the U.S.. - and the lead character is a Canadian and not your typical American.Dick Powell plays an embittered soldier (Gerard) who finds out his wife in France has been killed by the mysterious, and presumed dead, Marcel Jardac (Luther Adler). The trail leads him to Buenos Aires, Argentina where he gets involved in a nest of spies, war collaborator, profiteers and......insurance men! The machinations strain credulity at times, and some of the complications read as ways to mis-direct the audience more than to create genuine complexity. Still, the dogged pursuit by Gerard and the colorful characters including a lawyer named Santana (Morris Carnovsky), Jarnac's widow (Micheline Cheirel) and an oily local 'guide' Melchior (Walter Slezak - was there ever a better name for a Film Noir character actor?!) keeps the film interesting enough. Edward Dmytrk's direction is efficient, if a bit diffident at times. I am not the biggest fan of Powell in Noir roles, but he has his moments here.What elevates CORNERED is the long finale in a rundown cafe after hours. All of the key figures converge and it's a bang up - and, quite nasty - sequence. Tough and aggressive. If only more of the film were so tightly wound.

Dick Powell plays a Canadian pilot who returns to France at the end of WWII to find his wife was executed by the Vichy government, along with other French patriots. The man who ordered the execution is believed to be dead, but Powell doubts that and sets out to track him down. The trail leads him to Argentina where he finds himself surrounded by enemies.Noirish revenge drama starts out strong but falters due to a lead character with little intelligence, an overly talky script, and running on about 15-20 minutes more than it should have. One of those movies where the villain catches the hero and, instead of killing him, just talks and talks until it inevitably bites him in the rear. Still, it's Dick Powell playing a tough guy and that's always worth a gander.

This film was released within months of the end of World War II, and one suspects that it just showed a world that couldn't quite live without the paranoia it had lived on for a half a decade.The plot is that a Canadian pilot is looking for the Vichy collaborator who ordered the death of his French wife ("A bit too skinny, having been squeezed in between two wars" he describes her.) He is caught up in a web of collaborators and self-serving people trying to wiggle their way past world war II and into the Cold War, I guess.Powell is pretty good in this, showing the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome before we gave it a fancy name. The notion that Fascism and Nazism had gone to ground was a bit silly. Anyone who got there was just trying to escape a bad decision, not try again.Still, a fun movie to watch, it keeps your interest.