==The night was streaked, like too many ink wells collided on the way to the press. The dialogue was hard boiled, but a look in the pot and it was all just so much wet cardboard. And then... grenades. And it was over for the similes and metaphor, and on for the German white phosphorus.== **`Would be a 5, but it's just as funny when it's bad, and it has some genuinely good noir scenes.`** This was something else, and I had a great time watching it. Engaging, although it definitely starts to lose believability by the last act. But by that point, it's very much in the "so cheesy and off-kilter it's good" territory, even with the ramping incidence of stilted delivery. The first half, but especially the middle, plays out with some great noir vibes and visuals. I really would have liked to see how the rest would have played out had they actually gotten Rita Hayworth like they had intended. I would kill to experience one of those swanky 1940s jazz casinos. Minus all of the smoking. It's no Bernard Herrmann, but I found the score to be good. That is to say, it lacked the blaring melodrama jump-scare scoring that serves to blemish better films of the era and genre. This just kind of fits the mood without overdoing it. Reading the Wikipedia page for this and I agree with the reception at the time. It might be even more enjoyable now, given it can be more easily viewed as a somewhat bizarre and off-kilter noir film with some great pulpy lines, both in dialogue and Bogart's genre-typical detective narration. After finishing, I read more about the reception and it convinced me that I wasn't reading too much into the very on-the-nose misogyny of Bogart's character, and the homosocial bonding and what I interpreted as homoerotic imagery and using the femme fatale as a coded (if not resentful) placeholder for a doomed homosexual romance. The first scene has the intellectual twink/noir plot device literally lathering up bare-chested in the train car with Bogart, and they give Lizabeth Scott's character the nickname "Mike" and use it exclusively throughout the final act. Bogart is always watchable, but I also really liked Carnovsky's Martinelli and George Chandler's Louis.

Pretending to have a conversation with someone on the phone was not one of Bogarts strengths and Dead Reckoning features many such phone calls. The clumsy airborne metaphors, awkward narration, and bad lip syncing to the femme fatale’s character defining singing performance prevent this noir mystery from fully delivering.