Review of Kansas City Confidential (1952) by Ed B — 25 Jan 2013

There is no such thing as a perfect plan. Not when it comes to movie heists anyway. There's always that one thing that becomes the fly in the ointment. No matter how perfectly conceived, well, things go wrong.

Some of the time it's a nobody with loose lips that sinks the ship. Sometimes the plan is done in by a nosy cop. Hell, most of the time it's foiled by the bad guys' own greed. Not in this case. No, in Kansas City Confidential the plan is done in by an outsider with a chip on his shoulder.

A mere victim of circumstance, Joe gets fingered for the heist of the century. He's simply some poor sap that should've called in sick that day. Only he wasn't set up or framed to take the fall, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Locked up, grilled and publicly slandered, he's become notorious around KC. As an ex-con trying to make an honest living, things have been tough. Now with the unfavorable notoriety he's been receiving, he's got nowhere to turn. With nothing left to lose, he decides to track down the crooks himself.

The men responsible for the crime are unaware that some poor chump took the fall for their deeds. In fact, their plan was so perfect, there was no reason to even suspect that somebody could be onto them. The hitch is: They wore masks. None of them saw each other's faces before, during or after the heist. Hidden identities and no names insured that snitching would be out of the question. Brilliant.

Brilliant that is, until Joe shows up. Posing as one of the robbers, whom the others could never identify, he arrives at the rendezvous to collect a split of the earnings. Of course, this can't go smoothly either. Movie heists never do.

In the end, nothing goes according to plan. The seemingly perfect crime is foiled by it's own brilliance. Going to such great lengths to hide their own identities opened the door to outsiders and their own suspicions. Whether it be law abiding citizens or criminals, anonymity breeds distrust.

To quote Robert Burns, "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Keep that in mind next time you mastermind a brilliant heist... and do the job alone. If you want something done right, do it yourself.