Save your money for something good and enjoyable

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

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

French diplomat (William Powell), who suffered amnesia years before, finds himself the victim of an extortion plot. He's accused of being a former criminal who has changed his identity. As more information comes to light, it begins to appear the charges against him are true. William Powell is fine in this intriguing but flawed mystery. Hedy Lamarr plays the dutiful wife. Claire Trevor is the villainess. I wonder if the movie wouldn't have been better served by those actresses switching roles? Basil Rathbone is Trevor's partner in crime and he's enjoyable, as you might expect. It's got a lot going for it, not the least of which is the cast and that it is good-looking film overall. But there's just something missing about it. It's a little dull at times and it lacks kick. Still, with a cast like this, you shouldn't pass up giving it a shot.

I don't think that's redundant. Think of how many mysteries in which the culprit/villain/murderer is known from the beginning of the film (for instance, "Sleuth"). Those are 'cat-and-mouse' stories, and it's a matter of time before the perp is found out."Crossroads", however, remains mysterious until the very end, and the mystery deepens as the film unfolds. William Powell, at his urbane best, is the amnesia victim who may or may not have been a criminal before his accident. Hedy LaMarr is his devoted wife and is gorgeous but with little else to do. Basil Rathbone is in one of his patented Loathsome Villain roles and gives the picture the rating I gave it.The picture is extremely well written and holds the interest throughout its 84 minutes, which in this case fly by - no chance to check your watch in this one. Don't know if it was an 'A' or a 'B' at the time, but "Crossroads" is one of the best unheralded movies ever made.

WILLIAM POWELL and the gorgeous HEDY LAMARR co-star in a tale of an amnesiac who can't recall what happened to him when a train wreck wipes out part of his memory. Two very cunning crooks (BASIL RATHBONE and CLAIRE TREVOR) take advantage of him by posing as people who want to help him and then plotting to extort money from the wealthy French diplomat and his wife in order to hush up the crime they say he actually did commit.While the story itself seems far-fetched at points, it does make for an intriguing tale and it's played to the hilt by a very competent cast--although Powell as a French diplomat is a bit hard to swallow.The sinister overtones are well played by Rathbone and Trevor, both of whom always excelled at playing shady characters in films of the '40s, with Rathbone shifting from his Sherlock Holmes roles to those of the villain. They do much to give the film a flavor of film noir, as does the B&W cinematography.It's a clever tale, well directed by Jack Conway, and gives Powell and Lamarr a much better chance to emote than they would have two years later in a misguided comedy called THE HEAVENLY BODY.

William Powell is an amnesiac who can't recall his past beyond waking up in a hospital in Marseille in 1922. He had just survived a train wreck, but has no memory of the event or any of his past. Now of course he's a rising young man in the French Diplomatic Corps about to get a big appointment in pre-World War II France and he's accused of being a former master criminal. The evidence against him is 50/50.Basil Rathbone who says he's a former partner in crime with Powell now is engaging in a bit of blackmail and he's contrived quite a scheme to convince Powell he's who Rathbone says he is. A quite unbelievable scheme at that.It's sad that MGM wasted the talents of some of its best players for a story that's quite unbelievable. I don't want to write any spoilers, but let me say in order for this scheme to have worked Rathbone would have had to have psychic abilities to rival Nostradamus. Hedy Lamarr has little to do, but be Powell's faithful missus. And Claire Trevor, Felix Bressart, Margaret Wycherly and H.B. Warner have all done much better films.In fact the only reason it gets as many as three stars is for all the stars in this thing, God Bless 'em.