Thanks for the memories!

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is one of my favorite Film Noir period pieces (There are quite a few). The film keeps you going, plenty of tight close ups of the bad guys, good banter back and forth, excellent film noir all around. The director did a great job as did the actors too! Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand and Jack Elam. I know it's great when I can watch a movie more than once and this is one of them. Mike D.

KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL is a fine little film noir with a much more unusual storyline than you usually find in this genre. The protagonist, as played by John Payne, is a former convict now going straight by working as a delivery driver. All is going well until a trio of hoodlums hold up a bank and frame him, causing him to lose everything that he holds dear.The rest of the tale sees Payne travelling to Mexico in order to get revenge. This film is inventive and keeps you guessing throughout as to what's going to transpire next. Payne's character is very well written insofar as he's sympathetic and yet tough and able to handle himself at the same time. The story is full of twists and turns with only a few slower, more romantic moments.One of the best things about the movie is the casting of three top 'henchmen' actors to play the robber trio. The extremely imposing Neville Brand plays the brawny guy, Lee Van Cleef plays the slimy one, and the excellent Jack Elam steals the show as the sweaty and nervous one. The first half of this film in particular is excellent, delivering suspense in spades; the second half is more traditional but still watchable and with a neat ending that ties the sub-plots up nicely.

Pretty good film noir. I wouldn't say it's one of the best but it's pretty good. I am always interested in a movie's film locations especially if it was filmed in L.A. But part of this film seems to have been filmed in some parts of Mexico like Tijuana. Yet, there's no mention of those international locations mentioned on this website about this movie. I noticed Borados was mentioned in the movie and even a sign shown as one of the primary locations where most of this movie was filmed. This is where most of the action occurs. I did a web search and noticed that there is a Los Borrados town in central Mexico in the state of Zacatecas. Perhaps this is the same town which was later renamed to Los Borrados. Was this movie actually filmed there?

Everything's up to date in Kansas City, so a group of bank robbers in hooded masks get together to commit the biggest heist that the mid-west city (spread across two states) will ever see. Three of the robbers have no idea what the others look like, with only the mastermind aware of who is who, having basically blackmailed the others to get involved with promise of a large cut. They don't count on ex-con John Payne, a war hero and reformed felon, being arrested for an alleged involvement, only because he was near the scene of the crime in the same flower shop van that the others used as a get-away vehicle. After less than half an hour, the action switches to foreign locations where Payne begins his investigation as to how he got framed so he can clear this off of his record. After one of the men is killed, Payne assumes his identity, and tracks down the other men, including the mastermind (Preston Foster) and his beautiful daughter (Colleen Gray), where he is forced into the final showdown with investigators of the crime and a surprise is revealed that will alter the outcome of the original robbery.The performances of the four actual criminals are worth viewing for individual detailed characteristics, and Payne, a truly versatile actor, gives a nice dead-pan performance as he expresses an understandable world weariness, first from surviving a war, then from trying to turn his life around from crime. Gray plays more than just a walk-on love interest with no real purpose. Even if her screen time is limited, she brings a different dimension into the character of her father mastermind. Foster is outstanding, first in plotting the crime, then in bewilderment as he meets the intrusive Payne, and finally, as he faces his own conscience. Jack Elam, Neville Brand and Lee Van Cleef are worthy of note as the three men involved, while Don Orlando, in a brief role of a cab driver that Payne meets in Tijuana, is memorable as well. This well written film noir is another example of expressing the true meaning of "Crime Does Not Pay" and that in the end, the truth is always revealed.