Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Harry Brown, from a novel by Horace McCoy
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Starring James Cagney, Barbara Payton, Helena Carter, and Ward Bond

Features:

• None
  

Rating: NR, suitable for audiences 13+

Anamorphic: No

My advice: Rent it

Ralph Cotter is a reprehensible bastard of a human being – and he’s been doing time for it for a while. But with a little help from one of his fellow inmates, Ralph stages a daring daylight escape from the work farm (stopping to shoot said fellow inmate in the head so he doesn’t slow Ralph down). Then he rolls back into town, shacks up with his dead co-conspirator’s sister (by threatening to expose her role in his escape), and sets about trying to scheme his way into money again.

Unfortunately for Ralph, the local law enforcement is almost as crooked as he is, and he finds his hard-stolen cash being taken from him in a daily shakedown by a pair of crooked inspectors. After a couple such encounters, he gets one of his buddies to set up the gear to record the next shakedown. With this damning evidence in hand, he turns the tables on the crooked cops, and starts pulling bigger and more dangerous jobs in the town, attempting to muscle in on the local criminal underworld – hitting payrolls, snatching extortion payments, and knocking off the local godfather’s best thugs.

But Cotter presses his luck when he gets involved with the daughter of a local pillar of the community (who just happens to have ties to said godfather and thugs). Not only does this notable resent Cotter’s entrance into his family, but the other woman in Cotter’s life gets a bit jealous, and starts making his life difficult at home. Then there’s the standard concerns about backstabbing criminal associates, and all in all, Cotter’s life isn’t all the happy-go-lucky, free-wheeling killing and stealing spree that he wanted when he broke out of prison.

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye presents James Cagney at his bad-guy best, being truly unredeemable in a vaguely charismatic fashion that makes it hard not to like him (though Cagney’s so good at being a bastard that even his charisma can’t make him likeable for very long at a stretch). The plot is classic noir, from the crook’s side as opposed to the classic private eye. The cast of characters is fairly typical for a heist film, but this doesn’t really hinder the story. Don’t expect any radical twists on the genre, and you’ll be in for a fairly solid effort utilizing the classic conventions of crime noir. The tale is tightly plotted, and there’s just enough gunplay to keep things moving along at a solid clip.

The video looks as good as one can expect for a film half a century old. For the most part crisp, though there are spots where the limitations of old black and white film stock are readily apparent, and there are some places where some screen “noise” is present – but never enough to be terribly distracting. No features are present to speak of, but this is hardly surprising – though I still think Maltin probably has something interesting to say about it, and somebody ought to be taking advantage of his encyclopedic knowledge of cinema.

Fans of noir or of Cagney should definitely check this one out – it’s a good movie that might bear keeping if it appeals to your particular tastes. If you’re not into anti-heroes or the vague idealization of the criminal lifestyle, this one will rub you the wrong way, guaranteed.