Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

PWNYCNY This movie succeeds not only because of the story, but also because of the presence of Dick Powell and Walter Slezak. Their performances are strong. Powell shows that he can play a serious role and Slezak succeeds in conveying the kind of duplicitous shadowy figure who is both engaging and untrustworthy. As for the story, it touches on social and political themes that could resonate with a contemporary audience - post war trauma, war criminals, war itself - but does not develop these themes further. Instead, the movie opts to play up interpersonal conflict as the characters work at cross purposes, thus interfering with each other and generating more distrust. In this way the movie succeeds in maintaining a high level of tension as the conflicts play out. Although not an epic, the movie is engaging, fast-paced, has lots of action and is entertaining.

Neil Doyle Directed in crisp, no nonsense direction by Edward Dmytryk with plenty of tough dialog and ambiguous bad guys, CORNERED gave Dick Powell a chance to play the kind of tight-lipped role that would have been offered to Alan Ladd if this RKO film had been made at Paramount.In Ladd's laconic style, Powell is a Canadian flier seeking to find the identity of the man who was behind the killing of his wife in France toward the end of WWII. He goes on his mission while making serious blunders about the innocence or guilt of everyone he encounters along the way. Nevertheless, despite the fact that he can't trust villainous Walter Slezak who befriends him, he does manage to nail the culprit in time for a satisfying conclusion. Luther Adler is fine in what is essentially a bit role in the story's final scene.It's competent but hardly inspiring or original. It passes the time as a film noir of moderate interest with a good tough guy performance from Powell, who kept reminding me of the sort of anti-hero Alan Ladd was in his early films at Paramount such as "This Gun for Hire" and "The Glass Key." But "Cornered" is not quite as effective as those Ladd films.

JoeB131 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.

blanche-2 It seems as if Dick Powell is almost forgotten today, which is a shame. A wonderful actor, singer, and incredible producer, he gave Sam Peckinpah and Aaron Spelling their starts, and his "Dick Powell Theatre" on TV was marvelously entertaining. Unfortunately, cancer would take him at the age of 59. But he packed a lot into those years.Transitioning out of the Warner Brothers singing juvenile, Powell made "Murder, My Sweet" with the same director responsible for "Cornered," Edward Dmytryk, who would find himself blacklisted later on. Here, Powell plays a Canadian flyer, Laurence Gerard, who goes to France after the war to find out who is responsible for his wife's death. He learns it is a Vichy collaborator, Marcel Jarnac, now dead himself. Gerard doubts that Jarnac is dead, and his search for Jarnac takes Gerard to Argentina, where many Nazis have settled. Before long, Gerard realizes that he is unable to trust anyone, even those who claim to want to help him.This is a very good movie, which also stars Walter Slezak as a man who sells information, as well as two Broadway stars, Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky. Carnovsky was named as a communist by Elia Kazan but enjoyed a great stage career, dying at the age of 94.Well worth seeing for the good performances, direction, and story.