Undercover cop Fred MacMurray dates blond bombshell Kim Novak (in her first starring role) to nab her bank robber boyfriend, only to find himself irresistibly drawn into a Double Indemnity-style scheme, in the crackling Pushover. Confined – until its fatal shootout finale – to a few apartment building rooms and hallways, Richard Quine’s noir is marked by a visual claustrophobia that nicely matches MacMurray’s increasingly hemmed-in situation, which involves both duping his increasingly suspicious colleagues and evading the Novak neighbor (Dorothy Malone) with whom his upstanding stakeout partner is smitten. Dragging things down are performances that range from lethargic (MacMurray) to gorgeously vapid (Novak), as well as by-the-numbers fatalism that lacks a needed measure of hot-blooded desperation. Still, the sturdy film’s formal rigorousness keeps its suspense taut, especially during a third act characterized by characters running in and out of doorways like Looney Tunes characters, as well as a corny – but nonetheless evocative – recurring Rear Window-ish binoculars shot that conveys the story’s moral divisions through a pan from Malone’s white-clad good girl to Novak’s black-garbed femme fatale.
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