This is woeful pablum. The near constant stern-sounding voice over describing the supremacy of the FBI agents is laughable. There is no mystery whatsoever. Pure garbage. Skip this propaganda masquerading as "film noir".

. . . and the Feds do not break out their machine guns until one agent has been killed and about a half dozen more G-Men seriously injured by a nest of Public Enemies. Why this reluctance to use an arsenal purchased on the U. S. tax payer's nickel? It is as if someone is trying to make a short story long. Perhaps the best way to respond if you share the General Displeasure about CROOKED MILE is to generously support your local chapter of BANGS (Broke Americans Need Gun Stamps).

I've watched this film last year, and it is quite good. It keeps you in the edge of your seat all the time. As mentioned here it is from the time that Hollywood begun making movies against communism.

**SPOILERS** With hard edge news documentary style narrating by Reed Hadley the film "Walk a Crooked Mile" was made and released by Hollywood during the congressional hearing about Hollywood possible being run by crypto Communists both behind and in front of the camera. It was suspected by many in the US Congress and Senate that they were secretly brainwashing the clueless US movie audiences on the wonders of the Communist system by incorporating them into their films. In the film there's this Communist spy ring that unfiltered the Lakeview Nuclear Labs in Southern California who's been stealing formulas in advance nuclear physics and atomic bomb making. It's up to FBI Secret Agent Dan O'Hara, Dennis O'Keefe, and his partner from across the ocean Scotland yard investigator Philip Grayson, Louis Hayward, to crack the ring and bring those in it to justice. What makes both O'Hara & Grayson's job so difficult is that the sneaky Communists have a secret system of sneaking out the information to their outside contact in far off San Francisco from right under the FBI's noses! What's even worse is if that any one of the crew of Communists screws up and is about to be pinched or arrested by the FBI and spill the beans on them they suddenly end up dead. A bit over the top in how the Communist agents use strong arm tactics that in fact would, like it did in the film, exposed not hide them in plain sight from the FBI as well as local police. Among the Communist goons who do the dirty work for them is future TV Perry Mason Raymond Burr as Krebs who's Mafia like bone and head breaking actions do far more harm to their cause then help it. It takes a while for both O'Hara & Grayson to find out not just how the Communist ring inside Lakeview not only sneaks out the important information but who's the person in charge of it. By then the two were caught worked over and almost killed by the Communist agents and their goons who had so many chances to murder them but somehow didn't. This in fact made them look far more decent then they were supposed, in showing what murderous rats they are, to be in the movie. That by not batting an eye in gunning down or poisoning anyone, even among themselves, whom they slightly suspected was a danger to their secret plans. ***SPOILERS*** In the end both O'Hara & Grayson finally managed to escape from their butterfingered Communist captors and finally track down the head of the Communist ring at the Lakeview Nuclear Labs but only after O'Hara is again almost killed by the Communists on his way to meet Gryson and with the help of the local police and FBI arrest him. Still after being caught "red handed " the head man of the Communist ring at the Lakeview Nuclear Labs will be protected of his rights as an American citizen guaranteed by the US Constitution that he and his fellow Communist secret agents were so desperately, to the point of murder, trying to destroy.

Walk a Crooked Mile is directed by Gordon Douglas and adapted to screenplay by George Bruce from a Bertram Millhauser story. It stars Louis Hayward, Dennis O'Keefe, Louise Albritton, Carl Esmond, Onslow Stevens and Raymond Burr. Music is by Paul Sawtell and cinematography by George Robinson. A Scotland Yard detective and a FBI agent investigate what looks to be a spy ring infiltrating a top secret Nuclear Physics centre. To fully get the drift you really have to understand the era when films like this were produced, a time of The HUAC and Cold War paranoia, when Hollywood itself was under scrutiny to weed out supposed communist infiltrators. Good pro Gordon Douglas directs in a semi-documentary style - complete with Reed Hadley stentorian narration - in what turns out to be a decent spy like thriller. J. Edgar Hoover stuck his oar in to ensure no sanction of how the FBI looked was granted, which actually gives the pic some kudos, as does the superb Frisco location filming. It's nicely photographed in a noir style by Robinson, which lends one to lament he didn't operate more often in that style of film making. While perfs are absolutely fine, with Burr not for the first time in 1948 proving to be a great nasty presence. Narratively it's hit and miss, the fear of the communist is solidly played, but actually the fear of the scientists is probably more sneakily bubbling away under the surface. There's a brilliant sequence of events that ties into Nazidom, with a landlady holding court for maximum impact, and for dramatic purpose the torture sequence and inevitable shoot out hit the right requisite notes. Not a must see in the realm of Cold War/Spy Ring pictures, but entertaining and well mounted enough to keep it well above average. 6/10

This is one of the best espionage films ever made, for being so perfectly clever, realistic and actual in its day for the crisis of atomic secrets being smuggled to the Soviet Union, which really set the cold war off. Advanced nuclear technology is being smuggled out out from an extremely well guarded and sealed up atomic research centre, and it's impossible to understand how this is done. Five top scientists are the only ones privy to what is going on, and one of them is a traitor. Two of them are lovers, as one of them is a very beautiful woman. Raymond Burr is the very subtle villain here, he appears from the start and leads the way to the crisis and the ultimate meltdown, but the development to that climax is very careful and slow. As Dennis O'Keefe as the leading FBI investigator can't make head or tails of it on his own, a Scotland Yard agent is imported (Louis Hayward, always dashing,) and with his help they gradually approach the mystery. He even takes a job as a laundry worker to help things out, which nonetheless leads to serious trouble. It's a subtle thriller, and the final solution to the mystery couldn't have been more cleverly contrived, while the developed crisis on the way is no easy ordeal.

It occurred to me while watching this picture that if made just a few years earlier, it could have served well as a Sherlock Holmes film. A couple that come immediately to mind are "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" and "Sherlock Holmes in Washington". The difference though, in the case of "Walk a Crooked Mile", is the presence of those nasty Russian Commies in the place of Nazi agents. The opening screen narrative pays tribute to those federal agents who defend the country against saboteurs and no-goodniks who would 'walk a crooked mile' to do their dirty deeds. The story is tightly scripted with a number of twists and turns while teaming FBI Agent Dan O'Hara (Denis O'Keefe) with Scotland Yard counterpart Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward). O'Hara takes it upon himself to nickname Grayson 'Scotty' in service to his employer, I thought that was a rather nifty touch. The action takes place in Southern California and involves smuggling newly defined mathematical formulas out of the country by way of concealing them in artwork of San Francisco cityscapes. The intrigue involved in making this discovery was cleverly done, and though it occurs rather quickly for the sake of the story, one has to wonder about the number of man hours involved in the undercover work required to break a case like this. Just as in the Holmes films, proper devotion to the cause of patriotism on both sides of the Atlantic is displayed, but not in a way one might think and not via any of the principals. At one point, Grayson's landlady (Tamara Shayne) is roughed up, shot and killed by low-life Commie Krebs (an austere Raymond Burr), and with her dying breath, extols the virtue of a country that did so much for her. Grayson and O'Hara were suitably impressed. The film showed up on one of the cable channels in my area, featured as part of a noir film lineup, but for my money it more closely resembled an espionage thriller. It's got noir elements certainly, and if you want to consider Louise Albritton's role in the picture as your basic femme fatale, it would have worked, but she was eventually exonerated as part of the research lab team that included the traitors working for the Communists. I had to control my disdain for the character of Dr. Allen (Charles Evans) at the finale, one of the bad guys who disingenuously asserted his Constitutional rights when his treasonous role was discovered. Sounds kind of familiar when applied to present day, doesn't it?

The buddy film was not invented with Newman and Redford. Long Before, these two actors hit it off together splendidly. As far as I know, they sadly never repeated the experience. What a pity! The plot takes second seat in all this. You really root for these two guys. Maybe Gordon Douglas drew a Little from his experience with Laurel and Hardy - I don't know but the Chemistry between O'Keefe and Hayward works to such delight. The film is otherwise the usual cloak-and-dagger in which the heroes are in reality the villains and the other way around. Don't bother about that.

The documentary styles weaves in out with normal storytelling. It is always engrossing to see the America of old. An America long gone in critical ways. One major point that makes this film worthwhile is that is shows the early days of the "Surveillance State". At the time it was made we faced a real ( unambiguous) threat in a muscular USSR. Compare this post WW2 effort to one reflected in the James Cagney(WW2) film "Blood on the sun". A leap forward is undeniable. Sadly, since then, this capability has metastasized and with the internet, among other technologies, has allowed this once valid effort to go far beyond what is good for the country. The USSR is gone and (a far from wealthy) Russia has been replaced by China. A country we are tied with economically. Black and White has become shades of gray. Do we still have "Bad guys" that need to be surveilled? Clearly the answer is yes...but maybe things are being pushed too far. Are "good guys" being swept up with this massive AI broom? And the question is do they "Scoop up" far more info on the common citizen that is appropriate...even constitutional. And are they watching the right people? Or, trying God-like to see every sparrows fall? If so, it is Hubris on an gigantic scale. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, surveillance everywhere is effective surveillance nowhere. Paranoia plus bureaucratic over reach must be tightly controlled or we end up with an American STASI. Clearly the efforts of "G-Men" were being well funded even in the late forties. This film reveals that. A major expansion of "Cointelpro". But, this film was before computers and willing"partners" like Facebook. Their abilities have grown by orders of magnitudes. Once restricted to doing the job with telephones and shoe leather they could only to go after the"clear and present dangers". On a very limited basis. Now, they want it all. It has been said that God senses every swallows fall. Does the NSA/CIA want this God-like awareness? Now with satellites and super computers and budgets a thousand times what they were...has their judgment and oath to the constitution increased in tandem? I think not. A defensible moral stance, once more clearly held has changed.. So, in 2019, do they have the moral high ground and clarity of purpose they did fifty years ago? A look back in time provided by this modest film forces us to ask many questions.

The world has shown evidence that the fight against Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito did not leave us in a better place in fighting for freedom as we headed into the late 1940's. In fact, evidence showed that we had to fight harder for it, both in front of the scenes and behind the scenes, as if you were even suspected of being communist, you were subject to having every move you made traced. The F.B.I. was everywhere that worries about communism creeping in to democracy, and in this film, they join forces with Scotland Yard to keep those dirty reds from infiltrating the government. Lakeview California is the focus of the three settings where this film takes place where nuclear military secrets are being stolen, shown when an agent is shot point blank while at a boxing match just as he is about to reveal about what he knows going on behind the scenes of the nuclear factory located there. Evidence takes FBI agent Dennis O'Keefe to San Francisco where he is joined by Scotland Yard agent Louis Hayward in tracking down the killer who is quickly dispatched there. So now they are on the hunt for the killer of a killer, with enemy agents revealing that in order to achieve their goals, they must face the facts that if their cover is blown, they too will suffer the same fate as the first killer received. "I'm an American!", one suspect reveals, to which he is told, "Yes, so was another American. His name was Benedict Arnold." But are who they suspect of the scientists working at the factory actual traitors? One of them is the attractive Louise Albritton, and indeed, she is seen dropping off information at a laundry where one of the men seen at a meeting of the spies works. This is not up there with anti-Communist propaganda films such as "The Red Menace", "I Married a Communist" or John Wayne's big-time fiasco, "Big Jim McLain", more of an anti crime story where the subject simply happens to be spies trying to gain important military secrets. With typical film noir narration, it moves along at a brisk speed, particularly tense during a sequence in San Francisco where the agents break into the suspected second killer's apartment and utilize all sorts of FBI gadgets to obtain the information they require to nail him and his co-horts. It gets more tense as it moves to Los Angeles and back to Lakewood where the plot wraps up heatedly with a race to stop the villains from getting the pivotal information into the wrong hands. One of those hands is Raymond Burr, typecast during the late 40's and 50's as a film noir villain. You can tell he's a villain here because even his beard is villainous. Reed Hadley made a career out of narrating crime films, and he is the glue which keeps this together and interesting. A scene on the highway where the villains shoot at one of the good guys is extremely intense and rather nail-biting. This isn't a great movie by any means, but an entertaining and thrilling espionage drama with a film noir structure to keep it moving, and one that subtly reminded movie audiences of the late 40's that freedom didn't come without a price.