Women and armored cars are a volatile combination: both are seemingly impenetrable. And so it is in Criss Cross as a heist involving both is in the offing and betrayal seems the more likely reward. “From the beginning, it all went one way. It was in the cards, or it was fate, or a jinx, or whatever you want to call it,” says a resigned Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster), a driver for Horten's Armored Car Service who has just returned to L.A. after a two-year drift. The reason for his flight is a heart battered by Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), his calculating former wife and now the mate of mobster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), a shrill thug who's all over her like a bad rash. Director Siodmak places this triangulated story of crosses both purposeful and double in a cramped slice of Los Angeles, a flophouse on Bunker Hill, a sliver of a dim bar, the vertiginous Angel's Flight funicular. Just as the memory of Anna has permeated Steve's consciousness, the city's presence is an inescapable reminder of life's appalling indifference. Shot from a lofty point of view, the boldly rendered robbery has the crooks wandering through a smoke-filled street like lost inhabitants of limbo. Fatality hangs over Criss Cross like a thickening mist. For love-weary Steve Thompson, it's the air he breathes.