I'm many ways Detour is worth the investment of your time especially because, with a runtime of only 68 minutes, it's not a very costly one. It's filled with every noir cliche imaginable: stilted dialogue, foggy streets, (often overbearing) narration by the main character, seedy roadside cafes, the hapless patsy played convincingly by Tom Neal and the scheming hard-hearted dame played brilliantly by Ann Savage. Of course, since this is a rather early noir it's fair to say many of those cliches had not yet been fully established and, besides, isn't that exactly what we love about the genre?
The problem here is in the writing. If the terrible and terribly improbable things that happen to Neal's character don't strain our credulity, his responses to them will tear it to shreds. At every single opportunity he makes the absolute worst choice. And given that we need him to make those choices to drive the plot the whole story is rendered rather silly.
Still, if you're a fan a noir, you could do a whole lot worse.
The problem here is in the writing. If the terrible and terribly improbable things that happen to Neal's character don't strain our credulity, his responses to them will tear it to shreds. At every single opportunity he makes the absolute worst choice. And given that we need him to make those choices to drive the plot the whole story is rendered rather silly.
Still, if you're a fan a noir, you could do a whole lot worse.