Lloyd Bridges stars, and is slightly miscast(he's too good looking),in a tale of forger on the run. Bridges is a counterfeiter doing a stretch of time who is confronted by the reemergence of the bank notes he had been passing that got him put in jail. The Treasury department comes to ask his help and he at first refuses. Later he agrees and is set free in a staged escape. Bridges takes it on the lam and tries to run down the plates he had entrusted with a friend. Dark complex tale is a very good B crime drama. If it has any real flaws its that Bridges is not gritty enough as the lead. He doesn't feel like a tough felon in with a bunch of bad guys. Its far from a fatal flaw, but it's the difference between this being a great drama and a very good one. I also need to point out that the great and long running character actor John Hoyt has a large and very important role as an undercover T-man. Hoyt is a guy who usually plays a villain and usually has tiny roles, but here he gets what amounts to the second lead and he shines. Worth a bag of popcorn and a soda.
Trapped
1949
Crime / Drama / Film-Noir / Thriller
Trapped
1949
Crime / Drama / Film-Noir / Thriller
Plot summary
The Secret Service of the US Treasury learns that a new batch of counterfeit bills has been in circulation using the plates that Tris Stewart, having completed three years of a ten year prison sentence, had used that led to his conviction. They are able to make a deal with Stewart, in consideration for early parole, to stage a "mock" escape so that he can help them locate the source of the counterfeit bills and hopefully recover the plates to shut down this counterfeit operation for good. In discovering that the plates had been sold by Stewart's deadbeat former partner Sam Hooker to one of their old associates, Jack Sylvester, Stewart may have other things on his mind, such as reconnecting with his old girlfriend, Meg Dixon, a nightclub cigarette girl who now goes by the professional name Laurie Fredericks, and together living off the proceeds that those plates and resulting counterfeit bills can provide. What happens with Stewart and Laurie will not only be affected by Sylvester and his handlers in the Secret Service, but also by the presence of Johnny Hackett, who, assumed to be a racketeer in the way he easily throws around money in the nightclub, has his eye on Laurie for himself.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Movie Reviews
Really good film with a nice show case role for the under rated John Hoyt
crime doesn't pay
The U.S. Treasury Department is a vast and important part of the government. Counterfeiter Tris Stewart (Lloyd Bridges) exchanges his prison time to work for the department. Instead, he escapes to meet up with his girl Meg Dixon (Barbara Payton).
It's a nice little crime drama and it has the added bonus of Lloyd Bridges. It is one of those 'real' crime dramas. The gangsters are gangsters and the police are the good guys. It's a great start for Lloyd Bridges to double-cross the agents but it does ramble on even with this runtime. It needs to stay with Tris all through the movie. It needs to be his movie but in the end, it's the Treasury agents' movie.
The strings come loose
The Secret Service is looking for a break in a counterfeiting case and they offer gang member Lloyd Bridges who is in prison a chance to squeal on his old mob. Bridges won't talk, but does pull off an escape.
It's all a set up with the Treasury guys monitoring him and his moll Barbara Payton's every move. Like puppets on a string, but the strings come loose and they are working in the dark.
As we learn what's the ending here is not the ending planned as Bridges is taken out of the picture because in real life he got ill. What happens isn't the most satisfactory conclusion, but it had to do.
Even with making the change on the fly, Trapped is a nice satisfactory B film from Columbia with the ensemble cast fitted nicely in their parts.