No One's Good
The movies that impress me the most are those with great dialogue and where every character is more bad than good. Payback and The Counselor come to mind in this regard. All the characters have some element of evil to them and its fun watching them "out evil" each other.
Out of the Past is one of those films. With the exception of maybe The Kid, everyone in this movie is looking to stab someone in the back. Mitchum is great as Jeff, a former private detective being dragged back into the seedy life he thought he'd left behind. Douglas is gangster Whit, who hires Jeff to locate his pseudo girlfriend, Kathie, played by Jane Greer. Jeff and Kathie have an immediate attraction and Jeff fails to turn her over to Whit. However, Kathie is not as innocent as she appears and she's probably more cold hearted and devious than any of the male characters.
The dialogue in this movie is Chandler-esque. Lots of laconic one-liners and symbolic descriptions of women as dangerous. I've read on here that the plot is supposed to be confusing, but it was more of a red herring, so I didn't really care about it. It involved Whit's taxes. (In the remake, Against All Odds, the plot is really confusing as it involves LA real estate scandals and I thought it was a real distraction).
The scenery is gorgeous (even for a B&W film). The Mexico settings and the hills in California are breathtaking. The pacing of the film is about perfect and allows you to be drawn into the story as opposed to being pulled along with it, like in a lot of action movies. Jeff, Whit, and Kathie are pretty bad people, but you almost can't help liking them. Its a tribute to the outstanding acting of the leads.
My memory foam pillow says it can't remember my face. I can tell its lying.