In the world of noir , time is always running out. It might be that a trap is closing steadily around someone whose time is growing short. Or a seemingly foolproof scheme that's been planned like clockwork is coming apart because the timing has slipped out of joint. Time is an implacable force that marches steadily forward, crushing men's plans and destroying their lives with a kind of awesome indifference. Then again, it may be something more sinister, an agent of fate deployed on some cruel whim by a malevolent and misanthropic universe to play a black joke on some poor sucker.
Time always has the last laugh.
Films noir often shuffle back and forth in time, using flashbacks and past-tense narration to lend an ominous air of destiny and inevitibility to their stories. The picture just retraces the characters' steps to see how each one led inexorably to a fate that's already been decided. In film noir , corpses may have plenty to say about how they got that way. And Waldo knows how to make a fine first impression. It ends with a bang.