A film noir about a mechanic/racecar enthusiast caught up in a bank robbery & a femme fatale from 1954 starring Mickey Rooney. Rooney is a mechanic & a sideline driver who dreams of racing in Le Mans but due to his an injury (his face bears a scar) & diminutive status, he's aces at fixing cars but not in engaging w/people. One day a slinky woman, played by Dianne Foster, comes into his shop w/car trouble & catches his eye & her being pliant to him awakens a possibility of romance. It turns out she's actually the lady of a traveling bank robber, played by Kevin McCarthy, who gives Rooney an opportunity to be a driver for a bank robbery (a chunk of the getaway takes place on a desolate road leading to the highway) so at first he emphatically says 'no' but after being massaged verbally by Foster, he goes along w/the heist which yields the typically depressing bouts of crosses & double crosses apropos for the genre. A nice vehicle (sorry!) for Rooney who was going through a new phase in his career since he wasn't the cute youngster anymore belting out tunes w/Judy Garland so this film (ironically there's another movie he made around the same time where he played a car driver) was a good stepping stone for the bottom of half of his resume. Funnily the film was scripted by Blake Edwards (the Pink Panther auteur himself) who would cast Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's (which he directed & Rooney played Mr. Yunioshi) w/direction by Richard Quine, an actor turned director (he also was briefly married to Kim Novak), who showcases his actors well in a lot of sun dappled locales which in itself is an antithesis to the usual morose doom & gloom of most noirs.
Review of Drive a Crooked Road
