Roadblock (1951) (original) (raw)
Synopsis
Hot lead and cold cash outside the law!
An insurance agent's greedy girlfriend with a taste for mink leads him to a life of crime.
Cast
Popular reviews
Man, the first act of this is so fantastic! Joan Dixon as the frankly gold-digging, clever grifter, Charles McGraw as the bored insurance cop who burns it all down for a woman who won't have him without money — it's wonderfully seedy, with just the kind of overheated, small-time urgency that makes a noir great. Unfortunately, when Dixon's character has a sudden change of heart (no prizes for guessing that it's a bartender's mention of family and kids that magically turns her into a good girl who needs nothing but love to be content), the whole thing loses a lot of its urgency and intensity, undermining what had been a spectacularly promising beginning.
Even with its flawed last 45 minutes,…
Charles McGraw, Nicholas Musuraca, RKO. It must be a film noir. Roadblock is based on a story by Daniel Mainwaring (as Geoffrey Homes), who wrote Out of the Past, and is cowritten by Steve Fisher, whose novel is the source of I Wake Up Screaming, one of the earliest noirs, and whose credits include Lady in the Lake and Dead Reckoning. These boys who know what makes noir noir. The rather ordinary direction by former actor Harold Daniels and a low budget placing limitations on sets are almost beside the point when the script and cast are this good.
McGraw was born for noir, a tough guy with considerable depth. Even his nose, chin, and cheekbones scream noir. He is…
How do you get a woman who is out of your league? For Joe Peters no relation (Charles McGraw) you plan a well-organized heist for the clout to get her. If anything triggers motivation it's money, and a lot of it. Some women are so beautiful, you can't take their disinterest as fact. “You’re a nice guy, Honest Joe, but you’re not in the right league. I’m aiming for the World Series.” That's noir speak for "you're not my type". ROADBLOCK (1951) is a fairly obscure LA noir and the template used is the classic noir tropes of a sultry femme-fatale, who leads a good guy into a crime that changes his morals. Things we do for love, or something.…
Not going to lie: While I generally enjoyed this straight-ahead noir about an insurance investigator who gets seduced by a beautiful “ chiseler” and then by the temptation to steal for her, my favorite part was the climactic chase — not because it was exciting, but because I recognized an L.A. tunnel they drove through from its appearance in a similar scene in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
I’m a very sick man.
“I want you so bad, I can’t think straight.”
The above line is basically the noir simp motto and I love it. Not to be confused with Detour, Harold Daniels’s Roadblock is a sneakily great little RKO noir shot by studio-favorite Nicholas Musuraca and featuring some strong performance by hard-boiled-at-birth Charles McGraw and the supremely underrated, resting-bitch-faced beauty, Joan Dixon.
It’s probably the most cursory Christmas of Criterion’s Holiday Noir collection, and doesn’t exactly do anything revolutionary with the formula, but I had a good time watching Dixon “aiming for the World Series” and McGraw shoot for the fur-coated moon, miss, fall back to Earth, and land in an LA riverbed puddle.
I thought it was a roadblock. Turned out it was the point of no return.
What does change a man, a woman or money?
2021 Noirvember No. 1
After becoming a familiar face in the Noirscape as a heavy, Charles McGraw had a few opportunities to prove his worth as a leading man in the early 1950s. It ended up being only a trio of films: Armored Car Robbery, Roadblock, and finally, the superb The Narrow Margin.
In Roadblock, McGraw has likely his most romantic role. It’s fascinating to watch his distinctively gruff demeanor and gravel-edged voice soften when he plays love scenes with gorgeous Joan Dixon. Though she’s presented as a gold-digging femme fatale, she never once pushes for McGraw to give her more than himself after they become a couple. Rather than a malicious weaponization of her femininity causing his destruction, it is clearly his own insecurity and lack of belief that she could continue to love him that leads him down a dark path.
My Letterboxd friend Andrew Augustine gently upbraided me today for starting my holiday viewing so late in December. (I kid, buddy.) So I’m making up for lost time by following his and fellow Letterboxd friend noir1946’s lead and watching this Christmas-set, if not exactly Christmas-themed, film noir. Charles McGraw stars as an insurance investigator who decides to sell inside information to racketeer Lowell Gilmore for a cut of the take. You see, McGraw has fallen hard for femme fatale Joan Dixon, who used him for a discount plane ticket and makes no secret of her plan to land a rich sugar daddy. She’s sexually attracted to McGraw but tells him his paltry salary and willingness to follow the straight-and-narrow are…
Almost certainly the most visible film of the largely unknown director Harold Daniels, Roadblock is an excellent little B-noir which has a superb turn of character from the two leads that makes it into something far better than it looked like it would be in its (pretty decent) first half.
It's especially smart in the way it toys with the common noir theme of the woman who's 'in love' with the male lead but won't head off with him unless he has something to offer to her financially. Daniels plays with this quite smartly. Charles McGraw, as an insurance investigator, gets involved with Joan Dixon, but she's "heading for the stars" while he's earning not enough to keep her happy.…
Must-see for the action in the Los Angeles River, which is noted as one of the first films to shoot there, but the rest is rather lackluster. It completely de-fangs its femme fatale (Joan Dixon) about mid-way through, because it's Christmas? It's a bit deeper than that, but still rather a sudden change.
Yule Logging 2023 #21
Roadblock is a fairly routine noir with a setup that's fairly typical of the subgenre: the moral decay of a man in order to please a woman.
Noir staple Charles McGraw plays Joe Peters, an honest insurance detective who meets Diane (Joan Dixon) while returning to Los Angeles after wrapping up a case. He becomes smitten with her, but she makes it clear that her tastes exceed his meager salary. To that end, he connects with a gangster (Lowell Gilmore), who happens to be Diane's sugar daddy, whom he has been investigating for a string of fur robberies. The plan? Robbing a train carrying $1.25 million to split between them.
Of course, this being noir, this…
Harold Daniels is a fairly obscure director. A unimpressive one from what I've seen. But Roadblock (1951) might or should be one of his best. It's got it's fans. For me, I've seen too many B-movies from this era to be fooled into thinking this is anything but. Does provide a few thrills. Especially the car climax and the tragic ending. But for the most part, it's as standard as it gets. The non-existent Daniels touch.