After sustaining a head wound in combat, decorated World War II veteran Eddie Rice (John Payne) is treated at a San Francisco military hospital for a permanent form of amnesia. This leaves him with no knowledge of his life, family and friends prior to his enlistment. Army intelligence is unable to fill this void as all, they know about his past is that he enlisted in Los Angeles. Doctors tell him that no medical cure exists for his condition, but suggest that returning to L.A. might allow him to run into people who know him and might help fill in the blanks.
Rice does so, and promptly runs into some folks who recognize him. However, they know him as Eddie Riccardi, a dangerous gangster gone missing, whose past record generates mistrust both among the police and all those who formerly knew him. Worse, ruthless crime boss Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts), who was betrayed by Eddie before leaving town, is now out for revenge.
The contemporary The New York Times film critic wrote, "The Crooked Way races along as a melodrama should and it has more than enough plot to keep its hard-working actors going from one dangerous situation to another. But there is so much pointless brutality in it that one may seriously question whether the movie people are wise to go on with the making of such pictures. The human family may not be perfect, but why subject it to so-called entertainment that is only fit for savage beasts."[1] In the 2009 book 100 Film Noirs, Jim Hillier compares and contrasts the film to Somewhere in the Night. Hillier says that The Crooked Way benefited from its low budget by forcing the filmmakers to be more creative, which makes it the better film.[2]
