'Accomplice' is a low-budget noir caper film, starring Richard Arlen after his career was long past its peak. I always liked Arlen; during the peak years of his career (late silent era to mid-30s) he was almost the exact equivalent of the modern Harrison Ford: an action hero, in the classic adventurer mould, who still had credibility as a serious actor in thoughtful dramas. 'Accomplice', regrettably, was made (on a VERY low budget) after Arlen's energies had run out, and it's a poor example of his craft.
Private detective Simon Lash (Arlen) is contacted by Joyce, an ex-girlfriend who jilted him at the altar. Joyce is played by Veda Ann Borg, who always looked trashy, and who gives a mechanical performance in this movie that makes me wonder if she's related to the Borg Collective (in Star Trek). Joyce's husband Jim has been suffering from bouts of amnesia, and now he's gone missing altogether. Jim was a bank executive, and Private Eyelash (I mean, private-eye Lash) is a cynical sleuth, so he naturally assumes that Jim's 'amnesia' was a pretext for embezzling bank funds. But then Lash investigates, and no funds are missing. Then, of course, he investigates a little more, and...
'Accomplice' sets up an interesting premise, but the script gets murkier and the characters' motivations more contrived as it proceeds. Noir films usually take place in a world where everyone is corruptible, everyone is motivated solely by self-interest, and the very few people who don't conform to those rules are subsidiary characters who get exploited or bumped off very early in the proceedings. 'Accomplice', however, belongs to that dismal subgenre which I call 'goodie noir', in which everybody in the world is a crook or a scoundrel EXCEPT the hero, who is always motivated by purely virtuous instincts and decency. I find this sort of story utterly implausible. Down these mean streets a man must walk, yadda yadda.
'Accomplice' is made even more painful because it's made on a wretchedly small budget. The film's director Walter Colmes (who?) shows an Ed Wood-like penchant for setting up his camera at the most ludicrous angle, over and over. We get too many car chases in this movie, and in each car chase we get lots and lots and lots of close-ups of spinning tyres. Ed Wood was an angora fetishist; is it possible that Walter Colmes was a rubber fetishist? The ending of 'Accomplice' is extremely contrived. Former silent-film star Francis Ford (John Ford's older brother) gives a welcome performance in a supporting role. I'll rate 'Accomplice' 3 points out of 10.
