Trapped

Much like the previous year’s T-Men, Richard Fleischer’s Trapped opens with a patriotic documentary description of the United States Treasury before introducing the film’s protagonist: in both films, a man who will go undercover to infiltrate a counterfeiting ring. Unlike T-Men, however, which benefits from director Anthony Mann’s noir instincts and cinematographer John Alton’s visual magic, Trapped is an ordinary, meat-and-potatoes B noir that delivers the goods on a modest budget and with a distinctive performance by Lloyd Bridges. Prison inmate Tris Stewart (Bridges) is offered early parole if he’ll lead the police to the source of his erstwhile counterfeiting enterprise by pretending he wants to get back in the game. After a staged prison escape and pickup from his supervising agent, Stewart changes his mind, knocks out the agent (a fantastic fistfight scene), and tracks down his former associates, including girlfriend Laurie Fredericks (Barbara Payton), undetected by the police. But is the Treasury already another step ahead of him? John Hoyt plays undercover T-man John Downey, and James Todd plays sleazy operator Jack Sylvester, who acquired the plates in question from Stewart’s former partner.