before opening in a wide release on January 15, 1947.

Reception

Critical response

Dead Reckoning received largely mixed reviews from critics at the time of its release. However, it was less kind to his co-star, Scott, "whose face is expressionless and whose movements are awkward and deliberate." The Hollywood Reporter published a review describing the film as "almost too tough for its own good."

Variety magazine also praised Bogart and liked the film, writing, "Humphrey Bogart's typically tense performance raises this average whodunit quite a few notches. Film has good suspense and action, and some smart direction and photography ... Bogart absorbs one's interest from the start as a tough, quick-thinking ex-skyjumper. Lizabeth Scott stumbles occasionally as a nitery singer, but on the whole gives a persuasive sirenish performance."

In 2004, film critic Dennis Schwartz was critical of the film. He wrote, "This second-rate Bogart vehicle has the star depart from his usual tough-guy role, though he manages to get into plenty of the action. It plays as a bleak crime melodrama that is too complexly plotted for its own good ... There's some fun in watching the Bogart character romance the husky-voiced femme fatale character played by Lizabeth Scott, but not enough fun to overcome how unconvincing is the sinister plot."

In 2010 Time Out called Scott "synthetic" but "alluring", and detects a "hint of self-parody" in Bogart's performance. It says that their "relationship never quite convinces, leading to a faintly embarrassing emotional climax." The film, according to the reviewer, "tries too hard to maintain its note of doomed noir romance," but is nevertheless "[h]ighly enjoyable".

Film scholar Robert Miklitsch writes in Siren City: Sound and Source Music in Classic American Noir (2011) that, despite the studio's effort to model Scott after Bacall, "she's not without her charms. Her performance... brings out something Bogart's character that remains occluded in his roles with Bacall, isolating a certain psychic volatility characteristic of the "tough loner," the man who knows too much."

Film scholar Robert Miklitsch suggested in 2011 that Dead Reckoning codified star Lizabeth Scott as "a classic siren à la Kitty Collins in The Killers," as Scott went on to star as a hard-edged femme fatale in a number of films noir following it.

Analysis

Film scholar Steve Cohan writes in Masked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties (1997) that a primary theme of Dead Reckoning is the failure of the reintegration of war veterans following their homosocial bonding during the extreme circumstances of combat. He also compares it to Bogart's The Maltese Falcon (1941), writing that it recreates the misogyny of that film through its "rejection of the femme fatale by reimagining it in masculine terms... Dead Reckoning also goes further than that earlier Bogart film in implicating the tough guy's mistrust of women and his corresponding respect for/rivalry with other tough men in a homosexual desire for the phallic virility with which he identifies as the measure of his manhood." Writer Emmett Early echoes a similar sentiment, asserting that the film contains a "disturbed erotic undertone of misogyny," citing several pieces of dialogue spoken by Bogart's character that objectify women.

Cohan also notes that the screenplay combines elements of several of Bogart's previous films, "pushing his tough-guy persona to the point of unintentional self-parody."

Home media

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment released the film on LaserDisc on April 25, 1988. Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment released the film on DVD in 2002. In 2022, it was included in a region B Blu-ray box set of Columbia Pictures noir films by the British distributor Indicator Films. Indicator later released a standalone Blu-ray on April 22, 2024.

Restoration

Dead Reckoning underwent a 4K restoration by Sony Pictures in 2022, after which it was screened at the 2023 Wisconsin Film Festival.

Notes

References

Sources

  • Dead Reckoning information site and DVD review at DVD Beaver (includes images)