How could I have known that murder could sometimes smell like honeysuckle?

“Ride it all the way to the end of the line and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.”

In the movie Double Indemnity there is a hard-boiled theme, but it seems to be slightly different than the “classics”.  I believe that it is the fact that the main character is not a ‘good guy’ detective like we would like, but instead he is actually the criminal in the story.  Things may seem normal in LA at the beginning, but the people that you assumed were going to be normal, were actually the one’s that were playing on each others emotions.  Walter Neff is this salesman who seems to thrive on dreaming that there will always be change in his life and once he finds a way to get money and a girl, which he gets neither of, he jumps on it.  This noir style movie keeps you guessing as to who to vote for, but it soon becomes apparent that you clearly have been rooting for the killing side only because Neff starts to question his actions and back out.  Finally, when he says he will be getting off the “line” and not heading to his death, every person engaged in the movie realizes that he has done a great deed in trying to fix his wrongs.  I now feel like I need to tape my mistakes and give the record to my personal “Keyes”.  In the first chapter of More than Night the author says that there is no set time for when noir themes arrived and left, because it was always here and is still here, so think that over when you try to decide who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, because it could be you.

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