I Died a Thousand Times

A remake of Raoul Walsh’s 1941 High Sierra that is based on noted crime fiction writer W.R. Burnett’s novel; he also provides the screenplay. Old-school professional bank robber Roy Earle is sprung on parole from an Illinois prison by dying gang leader Big Mack in order to do one last big jewelry heist in a remote resort hotel in the High Sierras and fence the goods in LA. Roy meets in Chicago with crooked ex-cop Jack Kranmer, who runs the operation now that Big Mack is recouping in LA under the care of crooked Doc Banton. Then Roy goes, asordered, to a hideaway in a fishing resort, near the hotel, where he is forced to work with a couple of punky inexperienced criminals, Red and Babe, and a talkative inside man at the hotel — Louis Mendoza. The boys also bring along Marie, who soon becomes Roy’s love interest when he realizes how alike they are. On the way over Roy befriends a club-footed 19-year-old girl named Velma and her grandparents, heading to LA from the Midwest. They remind the aging Roy of his own rural farm roots and he pines for the wholesome girl and the possibility of changing his crime life after his final heist. This causes Roy to arrange through Banton’s connections for an operation that cures Velma, but when he asks her to marry him she rejects him for her longtime boyfriend back home. —Ozu’s World of Movie Reviews