Wow--this was a really enjoyable film to watch. And while the plot at times was far from perfect (it seemed a bit overlong and occasionally the characters behaved unrealistically),the character played by Lizabeth Scott was so awful, so malevolent and so selfish that this is a truly standout Noir picture. This is the sort of dame who you just love to hate! I think she was even more awful and conniving than Eva Gardner in THE KILLERS--now that's a "bad girl"! Her performance made the picture. Sure, all the others were great as well, but she stood way out front in my mind. In fact, she was so unredeemingly awful, that Dan Duryea's character was actually afraid of her--and that says a lot because usually Duryea is the sleaziest and slickest character actor in the Noir films in which he appears!

In a somewhat confused story line Too Late For Tears propagates the old adage of finders keepers to an 11th Commandment. Some money finds its way into Lizabeth Scott's hands and she's determined to keep it at all costs.

Lizabeth Scott is working on her allure in this film with all cylinders burning. Here she and husband Arthur Kennedy who seem happy enough get a satchel full of money tossed into their convertible by a speeding car going the other direction. It's about $60,000.00 bucks, yesterday I considered myself lucky to have found a dollar bill accidentally tossed in a waste paper basket at a bank.

You might keep a dollar, but someone is sure going to miss that $60,000.00. And he does in the person of Dan Duryea as menacing and as smarmy as he is in these kinds of films. Most women would flinch from this guy, but then Scott reveals some surprises in her character. Pretty soon she and Duryea have an alliance of sorts and that means real trouble for Kennedy.

Other prominent roles are Kristine Miller as Kennedy's sister and Don DeFore as a stranger claiming to be an old war buddy of Kennedy's who happens to be looking him up.

Scott degeneration of character is really something to see. You did get a hint of it toward the beginning when talks about her hard scrabble background as a kid, still she's quite a revelation.

Some really good acting especially by Lizabeth Scott carries this independent film from United Artists over a few rough patches.

TOO LATE FOR TEARS is a sufficiently gripping film noir starring Lizabeth Scott as perhaps the ultimate femme fatale, a woman who comes into possession of a suitcase containing no less than $60,000 worth of dollars and decides to hold on to it by whatever means necessary. Most of the plot consists of Scott's character running rings around the dangerous men in her life; the cast includes a youthful Arthur Kennedy acting alongside Dan Duryea and Don DeFore. Eventually things take a murderous twist, and there's the kind of downbeat ending that the censors demanded. This is a film that favours depth of characterisation over plot, and it's icy and mean-spirited enough to make its own mark.