Light-hearted, enjoyable war-turning-louse-into-good-person story with Alan Ladd very engaging as the gangster who is drafted and tries to get out of it straight away. The first two thirds of this is lots of fun - Ladd is a louse but not a super louse, his lawyer hires an old drunk lady to pretend to be his mother, he kidnaps a WAC (Helen Walker) and goes AWOL, then gets involved with his old cohorts selling secrets to the Nazis (that old Nazi reliable Miles Mander pops up).
Walker is a bit of a jaffa ("just another frigging female actor") but is pretty and likeable - her promising career was hurt in 1946 when he picked up three hitchhikers and crashed the car, killing one of them (NB for some reason many of Ladd's co stars had tragedy in their life - Veronica Lake, Gail Russell, etc).
The best bits are the scenes with Ladd and his shonky lawyer and Ladd and the little old lady (the two of them form a touching bond and the Nazis beating her up make him go looking for revenge - ok it's hokey but it works). But the last third it runs out of plot and so you've just got Ladd and the baddies running around in circles. Ladd is good looking, confident and totally at home in the role.
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