Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer were, as all fans of film noir understand, perfect together as they snarled their way to their inevitable coquettish heartbreak in The Big Steal (1949).  It's a film only aficionados of Film Noir tend to find their way to. Greer and Mitchum get all their credit for their pairing two years previously in Out of The Past (1947) which is darker according to all the ways film noir found to turn low the lights.

Out of The Past may be more canonical, but The Big Steal is more comical on account of Mitchum, by 1949, is a dope fiend in the eyes of the public. Leading female stars of the time wouldn't work with him. The studio had him on contract so they still had to make movies, so they threw him on noir-comedies set in Mexico, --the B-movies of the B-movie world. Out of loyalty -- and possibly also because working with Mitchum was fun -- Greer stuck with him, which has always seemed like a classy move. Hollywood produces bad boys as regularly as it produces summer blockbusters and Charlie Sheen's the latest. In a battle between Mitchum's smirk and Sheen's smirk, I wouldn't want to say which would win.

Film Noir is dark not just because the lighting is low but because post WWII North Americans sensed something in their society was off, and was bound to get offer. Former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the same themes as part of his farewell address in 1961. A lot of people have been expecting The Big Steal for awhile. Now that it seems to be here, and here, we can't entirely say the media hadn't warned us. The media, certain segments of it, did. Even a former President did. And the warnings have been circulating throughout our popular culture for the past fifty years. You can't blame Charlie Sheen for being Charlie Sheen anymore than you can blame Robert Mitchum for getting high, a half decade before most of the continent followed his lead. The bad behaviour of celebrities equipped with a smirk is endlessly fascinating. But when the hijacking of our democracy doesn't lead the news in all news outlets, that's some sort of cause for concern, isn't it?