Pat O'Brien is an art expert who gives lectures at a tony art museum in a big city. While riding on a speeding train, he sees another iron horse approaching. As O'Bien stares in mounting horror, it gets close. Too close. And then -- Ka-BOOM -- lights flash on and off, everything tumbles upside down, and when O'Brien comes to he finds he's punching his way drunkenly through the door of the museum, interrupting an important staff meeting, and the police are brought in to handle him. They coach the kinetic O'Brien onto a couch and everyone listens to his story, which is exciting, thrilling even, except for the fact that there has been no train crash anywhere.
The plot takes us deep into the seamy underworld of fine art. Well, we all knew it was a garbage pit to begin with, full of hoity-toity zealots who fling around the names of high-falutin' Frogs like Picasso, Gainsborough, Hopper, Rivera, el Greco, Carravagio, Da Vinci, Turner, Goya, Dürer, Hokusai, and Wang Wei.
But, okay, this doesn't make for much of a feature-length picture, so we are soon in noir territory, if you can imagine good-natured Pat O'Brien as the central figure in a movie filled with dark shadows, fog, louche dives, penthouse apartments, tuxedos, intrigues, helpful but suspicious friends, truth serum, murder, and insurance fraud.
The reason for O'Brien's imagined crack-up is banal and I won't give it away, though the discerning viewer may guess it before long. It's not a bad film. It's routine, but you'll probably stick around for the end when, as movie detectives are fond of saying, all will be explained.
The plot takes us deep into the seamy underworld of fine art. Well, we all knew it was a garbage pit to begin with, full of hoity-toity zealots who fling around the names of high-falutin' Frogs like Picasso, Gainsborough, Hopper, Rivera, el Greco, Carravagio, Da Vinci, Turner, Goya, Dürer, Hokusai, and Wang Wei.
But, okay, this doesn't make for much of a feature-length picture, so we are soon in noir territory, if you can imagine good-natured Pat O'Brien as the central figure in a movie filled with dark shadows, fog, louche dives, penthouse apartments, tuxedos, intrigues, helpful but suspicious friends, truth serum, murder, and insurance fraud.
The reason for O'Brien's imagined crack-up is banal and I won't give it away, though the discerning viewer may guess it before long. It's not a bad film. It's routine, but you'll probably stick around for the end when, as movie detectives are fond of saying, all will be explained.