150 Word Review: 'Detour' (1945)
Life in the fast lane
Tom Neal is grumpy and pathetic as a mopey pianoman who should have said "yes" when his nightclub girlfriend first suggested he move with her from lousy New York to sunny Los Angeles—the American dream.
But he didn't. Then he got lonesome and changed his mind, and made a decision that ruined his life: he started hitchhiking across this great land, which is full of wolves who are hungry for thumbs.
Director Edward G. Ulmer's Detour is a barren, low-budget masterpiece. Ulmer's America is lonely and beautiful, a bleak promised land where the guilty get punished. And everyone is guilty of something. In Detour, the first crime committed is not having enough money to buy even a little happiness.
The femme fatale (there's always one) is played by Ann Savage, who knows what Neal's loser did. She's like a girl next door on the road to hell. Vulture fabulous.