LOOPHOLE (director: Harold D. Schuster; screenwriter: from a story by Dwight V. Babcock/Warren Douglas; cinematographer: William Sickner; editor: Ace Herman; cast: Barry Sullivan (Mike Donovan), Charles McGraw (Gus Slavin), Dorothy Malone (Ruthie Donovan), Don Beddoe (Herman Tate), Don Haggerty (Neil Sanford, F.B.I. Agent), Mary Beth Hughes (Vera), Dayton Lummis (Mr. Starling), Richard Reeves (Pete Mazurka), 1954)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This film can be loosely pegged as a noir film, though it plays more like a typical 1950s caper movie. The films open like a documentary, as a voiceover tells us we are in Los Angeles and a group of bank examiners are about to make a routine audit of a Hollywood bank. Herman Tate (Beddoe), a bank teller himself, is disguised as a bank examiner and sneaks in with the examiner group undetected. He then goes to the head teller's window of Mike Donovan (Barry Sullivan) after an initial audit by one of the real examiners, and asks to recheck the big bills while his partner Vera distracts Mike, asking him if she can open an account at his teller's window. He steals the $50,000 in those few seconds and walks out of the bank unnoticed. At the end of the day, which is a Friday, a worried Mike notices the large sum of money he is short, but doesn't report it until Monday.
The poignancy of the story is how an innocent, hard-working person like Mike, could have his whole life turned upside-down over such an incident. When he tells his boss (Lummis) about it, he has no explanation why he didn't report it immediately, except he couldn't understand how so much money was missing. This minor slip-up, is why in a loose way, Mike becomes a noir protagonist, though he doesn't have the dark side to his character this genre usually calls for. His wife Ruthie (Malone) accepts his story, trusting him completely. Even the bank manager and the F.B.I. who question him, think he is innocent. But his life turns into hell when, even though, he is not charged with anything, the bonding company that must insure his honesty, cancels him out and the bank is forced to fire him. Not only can't he get bonded so he can get another teller's job, but the bond company puts a mean-spirited insurance investigator on his tail, Gus Slavin (Charles McGraw). Slavin is convinced Mike is guilty and tails him everywhere, and when Mike gets a job, he informs the boss on him and Mike is promptly fired.
Finally a taxi company, run by a tough-minded boss (Reeves), refuses to fire him, asking Slavin if you are so sure he stole the money, why isn't he in jail!
Mike gets a chance to clear his name when he accompanies his wife to the bank they just opened up an account in, and he recognizes the teller as the one who acted as the bank examiner during the heist. He then foolishly goes after Tate and Vera, not waiting for the F.B.I. men to take over the pursuit, as he promised his wife he would do. After the couple lure Mike into a trap, Tate refuses to shoot Mike, but Vera shoots Tate and wounds Mike. Mike is able to somehow stumble out of the beach house just as the police arrive to arrest Vera and get the money. The film ends on an unclear note, as Mike is happily back at his job, but Slavin is seen through his workplace window still following him for no logical reason. I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean, except that life for the Donovans will never be as rosy as it was when his day started on that Friday morning in April before the bank got robbed. I think if the filmmaker reworked some of the loose ends left hanging in this film, there would have been a much stronger film to complement the very strong characterization of the earnest Barry Sullivan character the filmmaker was able to present.
REVIEWED ON 5/24/2000 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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