Well, I wanted to like this, but it didn't work for me -- just too amateurish, despite having a fairly clever idea for a plot. The filmmakers should get some kudos for trying to recreate a 1953 film noir movie -- why? -- but they should have studied more such movies to prevent anachronisms. For one thing, back then, men in the crime world who didn't know each other well did not use first names, rather they used last names or nicknames -- think Rocco, Marlowe, Mason, Whitey. Some of the slang is off as well. The film also suffers from having the main character be as dumb as a board -- I wanted to yell at the TV screen: don't stand with your back to the door! It didn't help that the actor playing the part had to carry the movie but didn't seem to have either the range of expression or the intensity to pull it off. The other actors weren't bad, despite on-the-nose dialog -- Tracy Timm as Sadie was a sparkplug whenever she was in a scene. More nitpicks: continuity errors like where a character in shirtsleeves gets slugged and wakes up wearing his suit jacket. I admit to subtracting points that no explanation was provided for why the key character had lost his memory. As a final note, it was nice that the film showed a police practice -- roughing up a suspect -- as it was back then, rather than the whitewashed version we usually see on screen.
