Kansas City Confidential

The Fourth Man ( original title: Kansas City Confidential ) is a twisted black and white American film noir by Phil Karlson from the year 1952.

Action

Tim Foster is planning a bank robbery in Kansas City. To this end, he meets successively with the three criminals Pete Harris, Tony Romano and Boyd Kane in order to recruit them as accomplices. Since Foster hides his face behind a mask during this meeting, he remains even for the gangsters but anonymous. Thus, the three in the case of later arrest among themselves can not identify all wear masks during the robbery. The robbery goes as planned and the robber can escape undetected. Foster gives his accomplice instruction to hide in various locations outside the country and to wait there until he sends them a telegram to summon them to the division of the spoils.

Since the gangsters have used as a getaway vehicle a van with the words of a flower wholesaler, is Joe Rolfe, the driver of the real Auslieferfahrzeugs arrested. Because Rolfe itself has a criminal past, the police are with him at the following interrogations anything but squeamish about. Although it may ultimately prove anything to him and he is left free again, Rolfe loses his job, which had meant the chance of a new beginning for him. To establish his ruined reputation, he makes himself to the search for the bank robbers.

Through his old underworld connections Rolfe gets on the trail of Pete Harris. He manages to track down Harris in the Mexican border city of Tijuana and extort from him the truth about the bank robbery. Since Harris has in the meantime get the expected telegram, he is forced by Rolfe, to fly together for the planned meeting. As Harris and shot in the departure hall of the police, Rolfe slips unceremoniously into his role and flies himself to the meeting place, a holiday hotel in a Mexican resort. There he meets the other three bank robbers.

It turns out that Foster is an embittered former police officer who does not really want to split the loot. Rather, he intends to deliver his accomplices to the police to the knife to collect the advertised reward the insurance company. When it comes out that Rolfe is not who he claims to be, the events come. In the final confrontation Romano and Kane being shot and mortally wounded Foster. Before he dies, Foster tells the police that he had transferred together with the gangsters Rolfe Rolfe and therefore would be entitled to a reward. Rolfe did not have the heart to reveal Fosters lie, and confirmed his story.

Background

The fourth man was launched on 28 November 1952 in the cinemas of the United States. In Germany it was released in theaters on December 29, 1953.

Criticism

" Scenically excessive gangster film with some brutality, which was touted as a mirror of human depravity, this lurid claim but will never meet. "

" The fourth man is one of the best film noirs of the 1950s. "

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