9pm Friday - KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL – (1952) Crime Drama - An ex-con trying to go straight is framed for a million dollar armored car robbery and must go to Mexico in order to unmask the real culprits.
Kansas City Confidential opens on a Kansas City armored-car robbery perpetrated by cynical, corrupt ex-policeman Timothy Foster (Preston S. Foster). Foster devises an outrageous scheme: he will recruit three of the most vicious and unrelenting criminals he can find to undertake a robbery, blackmailing them into the heist with incriminating evidence from other "jobs." As an eccentric and clever conceit, Foster forces each of the perpetrators to wear masks, thus concealing their identities from one another and preventing the old pitfall of the men squealing and backstabbing. The heist comes off without a scratch, but a complication arises when the ignorant cops pick up an unrelated fellow, Joe Rolfe (John Payne) for his ownership of a van similar to the one used in the caper. In time, Rolfe is cleared, but he grows irate over the accusations and sets off to find Foster and co. and teach them a lesson.
TRIVIA
- None of this movie was shot in Kansas City.
- The 1.2 million dollars stolen from the bank would be the equivalent of over 11.6 million dollars in 2019.
- Quentin Tarantino has said that Reservoir Dogs was inspired by this movie. The parallels are obvious.
