Two O'Clock Courage (1945)

A rather rushed whodunit, with the plot weaving all over the place littering the screen with suspects, motives and distractions. At the end we have an anti-climax solution followed by the real killer being revealed. Bewildering? Thankfully Mann's direction is solid and the main leads Tom Conway and Ann Rutherford do a good job putting over the somewhat unlikely plot.The Noir Festival programmer at the American Cinematheque in his comments before the screening (where I saw this gem) quipped like many RKO b pictures this one has story contrivances that cut costs like most of the characters staying in the same hotel. But it gets a bit much when Conway's character gives the police the slip to search a room elsewhere in the hotel which results in a fight that the cops can hear through the ceiling. Talk about plot contrivance!

Incongruously lighthearted early noir from Mann, involving a familiar premise (the film is actually a remake of the obscure TWO IN THE DARK [1936]) – an amnesiac finds himself the chief suspect in a murder case and, while attempting to trace his identity, he also contrives to expose the guilty party. The lead role is played by Tom Conway, not the most likely noir hero perhaps – his overall stilted performance suffers most when striving for comedy; much more natural (and appealing) is Ann Rutherford as the spirited female cabbie helping him out, even if she's just as much at odds with established genre conventions! The plot is fairly convoluted: also involved, among others, are Lester Matthews (from THE RAVEN and WEREWOLF OF London {both 1935}), Jean Brooks (from the Val Lewton-produced THE LEOPARD MAN and THE SEVENTH VICTIM {both 1943}) and Jane Greer (soon to graduate to full-fledged femme fatale with OUT OF THE PAST [1947]); just as prominent, however, albeit merely for comic-relief purposes are a Police Inspector and a nosy reporter (who gets on his boss' nerves when he keeps changing the scoop i.e. the identity of the murderer). All in all, this emerged a pleasant and trim 66 minutes – but, clearly, a very minor footnote in the genre and the career of one of its most notable exponents.

**SPOILERS** Walking around the almost empty streets in the dead of night "The Man", Tom Conway, is almost hit by a taxi cab driven by pretty taxi driver Patty Mitchell, Ann Rutherford. It turns out that "The Man's" mind is as blank as a fresh sheet of typewriter paper with him in a complete fog to who he is and what he did and what caused that gash that he had on his head when Patty first picked him up. Seeing the evening papers "The Man" and Patty see the headline banner news of theater producer Robert Dilling being murdered in Oceanview where "The Man" was just hobbling around. The description of Dilling's killers matches the description of "The Man" right down to his pin-striped suit that he's wearing. "The Man" together with Patty slowly uncover his identity by backtracking to where he was that evening before he fell, or was hit, on his head. Putting everything together "The Man" at first finds that he's called "Step" by his friends. Later with the unexpected help of "Step's" forgotten friend and associate Mark Evens, Lester Matthews, finds out that his real name is Ted "Step" Allison and that he checked into the Recency Hotel where Ted and Patty just came from to check out who he was in the first place.Ted finds in his hotel room a letter from a friend of his, the late Larry Tenny, about a play that he wrote called "Two O'Clock Courage" and that the play seems to be the reason that Dillings was murdered.Ted himself is almost killed later in the film, as he gets too close to who the killer is, with a bullet to his head but it was that attempt on Ted's life that brought back his memory and with that the identity of the person who murdered Dilling.Ted really had some night for himself in the movie "Two O'Clock Courage"; he loses and finds himself he ends up being arrested by the police for the murder of Robert Dillings talks his way out of being put behind bars and later solves the Dilling murder and the reason that he was killed. There's also the secondary emotional plot-line that erupts at the end of the film between the killer and his jilted girlfriend. To top it all of Ted meets falls in love with and marries lovely taxi driver Patty Mitchell; all this happens to Ted before the night was even over.Besides Richard Lane playing the bumbling reporter Haley who in the end drove his boss news editor Brant, Charles C. Wilson, almost into the loony bin the police inspector Bill Brenner, Emory Parnell,on the Dilling murder case was even funnier in a dangerous sort of way. Insp. Brenner had a very bad habit of holding his revolver pointed at almost everyone that he came in contact with in the movie. It was sheer luck that everyone in the film made it to the end without unconsciously getting themselves shot or killed by this absent-minded policemen.

Fast-paced mystery as Tom Conway unravels his past life following an injury to the head and amnesia. Tom is believable as is the storyline. Ann Rutherford serves as an adequate sidekick, Jane Greer looks beautiful in one of her very early films, and we see Jean Brooks in one of her last. Although shot in the middle of the Falcon series, and much resembles same, this is actually a re-make of the 1936 movie "Two in the Dark." The plot has lots of twists and turns and it will not be obvious "who done it" until the very end. Enjoyable light entertainment.