In his 30s at the time, Mickey Rooney needed a vehicle (no pun intended) to reinvigorate his career which began as a child actor and soon afterward as a teenage matinee idol. He found it in the crime drama Drive a Crooked Road.
Rooney plays Eddie Shannon, a crackerjack auto mechanic and low rent race car driver who works at an autobody shop where he's occasionally mocked by some of his co-workers for his complete inexperience with women.
One day a very attractive woman, Barbara Matthews (Dianne Foster), brings her car to the shop where Eddie is assigned to repair it. After seemingly fixing it, the following day Barbara calls the shop and informs that she still is unable to start the car. Eddie drives out to fix the car again and Barbara feigns interest in him despite his obvious shyness and lack of confidence with women.
Barbara is the girlfriend of a criminal, Steve Norris (Kevin McCarthy) who has conscripted her to seduce Eddie and get him to participate in a bank robbery in which there is a necessity for an experienced driver to drive to a location hyper-fast to avoid police roadblocks.
The mechanics of the robbery just don't seem to be fraught with any kind of verisimilitude. For starters, Norris's associate Harold Baker (Jack Kelly) kidnaps the bank teller as he's leaving for work. Inexplicably, Norris with Eddie driving, follow Baker and the teller to the bank. During the ride to the bank, the teller is able to see what kind of car is following them and hence is in a position to identify it later on.
If they didn't follow the car, the teller could not describe the make and model and there would be no necessity to avoid a roadblock (Barbara could have joined Norris and Eddie and simply hid the loot in the car). The presence of a woman in the car would not have raised suspicions had the car been stopped and the bag of cash could have been easily hidden where the police would have no probable cause to search it.
There is also the problem of Baker forcing the teller to give him all the cash with the bank vault opening automatically at a set time. How is it possible that only the bank teller is present when Baker pulls off the robbery? You would imagine that there would at least be an armed security guard at the location.
Before the bank robbery goes down, Barbara reveals to Eddie she knows about the robbery and convinces him to participate as proceeds from the robbery will allow him to fulfill his dream of purchasing an expensive race car and compete in international racing competitions. At no point does Barbara show any physical affection toward Eddie (like even giving him a chaste kiss). But the poor schlub Eddie is so smitten with this femme fatale that he'll be content with the mere expectation of a future romance and hence will do anything for her (including committing a crime that could land him in jail).
Eddie's misguided obsession and infatuation with the scheming Barbara seemed plausible enough and despite the questionable (previously alluded to) mechanics of the robbery, I wanted to see how Eddie would end up driving the car and outwitting the police.
Then there's Barbara's regrets and feelings of guilt over seducing Eddie and manipulating him. In the dark moment at the end of the Second Act, she confesses her treacherous subterfuge with Eddie present, which convinces Norris that Eddie must now be eliminated. Baker is given the job of finishing Eddie off but while driving away from the beach house, Eddie causes the car to crash and Baker is killed.
I was a bit disappointed in the denouement. While Eddie saves Barbara from being killed by Norris, I wanted him to escape punishment at the arms of the law. But this is supposed to be a full blown tragedy-the expectation is that punishment will be meted out to Eddie as he was a direct participant in the robbery (his obsession with the manipulative Barbara of course does not absolve him of the crime-and the argument of "mitigating circumstances" would probably fall on deaf ears with a jury during Eddie's upcoming criminal trial).
Rooney does well enough in this low-key role but he's still too much of a pathetic sad sack to care for the character. It's really Foster and McCarthy who steal the show as the bad guys who interestingly enough have the inevitable falling out at film's end-due to the aforementioned guilt feelings that arise.
A few lessons we can learn from this "crime doesn't pay" drama: 1) many women have difficulty avoiding "bad boys" which they are drawn to; and 2) nice guys finish last!
Rooney plays Eddie Shannon, a crackerjack auto mechanic and low rent race car driver who works at an autobody shop where he's occasionally mocked by some of his co-workers for his complete inexperience with women.
One day a very attractive woman, Barbara Matthews (Dianne Foster), brings her car to the shop where Eddie is assigned to repair it. After seemingly fixing it, the following day Barbara calls the shop and informs that she still is unable to start the car. Eddie drives out to fix the car again and Barbara feigns interest in him despite his obvious shyness and lack of confidence with women.
Barbara is the girlfriend of a criminal, Steve Norris (Kevin McCarthy) who has conscripted her to seduce Eddie and get him to participate in a bank robbery in which there is a necessity for an experienced driver to drive to a location hyper-fast to avoid police roadblocks.
The mechanics of the robbery just don't seem to be fraught with any kind of verisimilitude. For starters, Norris's associate Harold Baker (Jack Kelly) kidnaps the bank teller as he's leaving for work. Inexplicably, Norris with Eddie driving, follow Baker and the teller to the bank. During the ride to the bank, the teller is able to see what kind of car is following them and hence is in a position to identify it later on.
If they didn't follow the car, the teller could not describe the make and model and there would be no necessity to avoid a roadblock (Barbara could have joined Norris and Eddie and simply hid the loot in the car). The presence of a woman in the car would not have raised suspicions had the car been stopped and the bag of cash could have been easily hidden where the police would have no probable cause to search it.
There is also the problem of Baker forcing the teller to give him all the cash with the bank vault opening automatically at a set time. How is it possible that only the bank teller is present when Baker pulls off the robbery? You would imagine that there would at least be an armed security guard at the location.
Before the bank robbery goes down, Barbara reveals to Eddie she knows about the robbery and convinces him to participate as proceeds from the robbery will allow him to fulfill his dream of purchasing an expensive race car and compete in international racing competitions. At no point does Barbara show any physical affection toward Eddie (like even giving him a chaste kiss). But the poor schlub Eddie is so smitten with this femme fatale that he'll be content with the mere expectation of a future romance and hence will do anything for her (including committing a crime that could land him in jail).
Eddie's misguided obsession and infatuation with the scheming Barbara seemed plausible enough and despite the questionable (previously alluded to) mechanics of the robbery, I wanted to see how Eddie would end up driving the car and outwitting the police.
Then there's Barbara's regrets and feelings of guilt over seducing Eddie and manipulating him. In the dark moment at the end of the Second Act, she confesses her treacherous subterfuge with Eddie present, which convinces Norris that Eddie must now be eliminated. Baker is given the job of finishing Eddie off but while driving away from the beach house, Eddie causes the car to crash and Baker is killed.
I was a bit disappointed in the denouement. While Eddie saves Barbara from being killed by Norris, I wanted him to escape punishment at the arms of the law. But this is supposed to be a full blown tragedy-the expectation is that punishment will be meted out to Eddie as he was a direct participant in the robbery (his obsession with the manipulative Barbara of course does not absolve him of the crime-and the argument of "mitigating circumstances" would probably fall on deaf ears with a jury during Eddie's upcoming criminal trial).
Rooney does well enough in this low-key role but he's still too much of a pathetic sad sack to care for the character. It's really Foster and McCarthy who steal the show as the bad guys who interestingly enough have the inevitable falling out at film's end-due to the aforementioned guilt feelings that arise.
A few lessons we can learn from this "crime doesn't pay" drama: 1) many women have difficulty avoiding "bad boys" which they are drawn to; and 2) nice guys finish last!