Criss Cross

Steve Thompson returns to Los Angeles hoping to win back his former wife, Anna, but she is now involved with the gangster Slim Dundee. Caught between the two men, Steve is drawn into a planned hold-up of the armored car he guards, a scheme in which he is meant to betray his colleagues while Dundee and his crew take the money. What begins as a way to free Anna and start again turns into a triangle of suspicion and betrayal, with the robbery itself going badly wrong.

Robert Siodmak directed this crime thriller, which followed The Spiral Staircase in his filmography after earlier work including The Killers and The Dark Mirror. Daniel Fuchs and William Bowers wrote the screenplay, and Michael Kraike produced it for Universal International Pictures. Burt Lancaster plays Steve, with Yvonne De Carlo as Anna and Dan Duryea as Slim Dundee; Stephen McNally appears as Det. Lt. Pete Ramirez. The credited cast runs to 45 names.

Released in early 1949 and running 88 minutes, the film holds a rating of 7.4 on IMDb from around 11,000 votes and 7.1 on TMDB from a much smaller sample. A critics' score of 8 out of 10 across 14 reviews places it somewhat above the audience ratings, indicating strong regard from reviewers.