"Drive a Crooked Road" is an excellent picture--written by Blake Edwards and starring Mickey Rooney. Most would probably consider it an example of film noir, though its camera-work and dialog aren't exactly typical for noir.When the story begins, you learn that Eddie (Rooney) is a small-time race car driver and mechanic. He also is rather quiet and is treated rather poorly at times due to his being so small. Because of that, he's vulnerable when a pretty lady (Dianne Foster) begins showing him a lot of attention. But she is not such a nice lady and halt ulterior motives. It seems her boyfriend (Kevn McCarthy) is a mobster and they are actually setting him up to become part of their robbery scheme! What's next? See the film.Most Mickey Rooney films, particularly those earlier in his career, are similar because Mickey plays nice guys or guys who become nice guys. Here, however, he agrees to become entangled with gangsters...gangsters who really are scum. Overall, well acted and interesting throughout...and well worth seeing. If you are interested, it's currently posted on YouTube.

Drive a Crooked Road is directed by Richard Quine who also co-adapts the screenplay with Blake Edwards from a story by James Benson Nablo. It stars Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly. Music is by Ross DiMaggio and cinematography by Charles Lawton Jr.Car mechanic and race car driver Eddie Shannon (Rooney) is surprised when beautiful Barbara Mathews (Foster) shows interest in him. Normally the butt of jokes at work and uncomfortable around women, Eddie falls for Barbara's charms big time. Is it too good to be true? You bet it is...Frustrating! Neatly performed by the principal performers and featuring classic noir characters, yet it's a picture not being all that it can be.The pace is borderline laborious as characterisations are formed and film's central plot device unravels for the first two thirds of the piece. That the acting is so strong keeps us interested, Rooney, in a performance he was very fond of, tugs the heart strings with a beautifully understated performance as the dupe falling into a world that is alien to him. Foster as the femme fatale is sexy and sultry and utterly convincing in the way she lures Eddie into the web. That web is being spun by McCarthy's suave and sly Steve Norris, who backed up by the witty and edgy William McIntyre (Kelly), has plans afoot to break more than just the Palm Springs Bank.It's very good characterisations, undeniably, but visually the film is flat. Oh the L.A. locations used are nice to look at, but the all round sunny days feel to the surroundings never sits comfortably with the human dynamics. Then there is the problem of the "big pay off" for the last third. All things are in place for some excitement but the makers fail to deliver, the action sequences are brief and only adequately constructed. While although the closing scene carries enough of a sting to lift the production out of the mundane, this is just watchable fare without being essential for the film noir enthusiast. 6/10

I tuned into this movie expecting to see Mickey Rooney doing his impersonation of a dramatic role. I mean, Mickey Rooney. Has anybody ever seen him do anything on film that wasn't over the top? Well, tune into this movie. I think you'll be as surprised as I was. The story has to do with a lonely, out of step guy who has a dream of racing in The Grand Prix. He's an accomplished mechanic, who races on weekends, but you know he'll never amount to anything. Along comes, long legged Dianne Foster. He falls hard, and she sucks him into a devious plot to rob a bank. What Mickey doesn't know is that she is in cahoots with a couple of classy mutts played by Kevin McCarthy and Jack Kelly. Foster lures the Mick into driving the getaway car so they'll have the money for him to race and they can live happily ever after. Not a chance. The plan all along is to ditch Mickey after the robbery, so she can run off with the mutts. Poor Mick never catches on on until the hammer drops, but by this time, the girls conscience gets the best of her and she spills the beans to Mickey. There is an explosive ending, but it does leave the viewer hanging a little.This is a Columbia cheapo, but the story is tight and well written. More importantly, the acting is first rate. All the principals really perform, but it's Mickey movie. He underplays the part of Eddie the sap perfectly. I didn't think it was possible, but this was later in his career, and I wish he had done more like it. It proved to me that he had much more range than one would think. I have to wonder if his height held him back. Or maybe it was his earlier body of work. Either way, I know he had much more to offer than Hollywood ever asked of him. Keep an eye open for it. You won't be disappointed.

Is there such a thing as a male weeper? Bang The Drum Slowly certainly belongs, as do parts of The Knute Rockne Story (`Let's win this one for the Gipper!'). Probably the whole athlete-dying-young genre does for men what Stella Dallas did for women. Another candidate for inclusion is Drive A Crooked Road, a 1954 noir starring Mickey Rooney.Rooney's abbreviated stature helped keep him in pictures as America's oldest teen-ager. But once he hit 30, it was inevitable that adult roles should come his way. As the noir cycle was in full swing, that's where he landed. In The Strip and Quicksand, he still managed to pass as a stripling. By the time of this movie, however, he was well into his 30s, with broad hits of chubbiness settling into his face and midriff. He was still the star, not yet relinquished to character roles, though it was unclear how to handle him. So he became a misfit – a `freak.' He's an awkward, lonely auto mechanic with dreams of driving someday in the Grand Prix – dreams he knows won't come true. With one exception, his fellow mechanics tease him mercilessly, especially about his lack of sexual experience. One day an unattainable woman (Dianne Foster) gives him the big eye, and he succumbs, however tentatively at first. (His ache for her is palpable when she plays hard to get, as he tosses on his rooming-house bed with his few racing trophies now emblems of hollow triumph). But she's just a cat's-paw for her real boyfriend, Kevin McCarthy, living the high life in his beach-house bachelor pad; he's planning to knock over a bank in Palm Springs and needs Rooney as his daredevil driver. With Foster's increasingly reluctant urging, Rooney signs on....The resolution, of course, is the falling out of thieves; a large portion of the plot was to be echoed, 10 years later, in Don Siegel's remake of The Killers. Though the robbery and escape should have been the centerpiece, or at least the central set-piece, of the movie, here it seems curiously perfunctory (these comments are based on viewing a version some minutes short of recorded running times, however). But the movie's staying power lies in Rooney's portrayal of the dupe, the victim – all the more memorable for being so understated.