Twenty Plus Two (1961)

Wonderful character development!

Admirable film.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

****SPOILERS**** Privite investigator Tom Adler, David Janssen,who specializes in finding dead person's family members is put to the test here when the secretary to action adventure actor Leroy Dane, Brad Dexter,Julia Joliet played by Gretrude Astor,is found murdered in his office with a scrap book filled with newspapers articles and clippings of Doris Delaney. Doris has gone missing 12 years ago after she found out that she's been put into the family way by a handsome tall & dark stranger who picked her up at the Brown Durby after treating her to a strawberry milkshake. Adler for some reason gets himself involved not in the murdered Julia Joliet's long lost relatives but in the missing and now pronounced dead-by the courts-Doris Delaney. As it soon becomes apparent Adler is or was somehow involved with Doris through his former girlfriend Linda Forster, Jeanne Crain,who he met at a bar a few days later.With all the confusion about this strange as well as mysterious case were then brought back 10 year earlier in 1951 at a ten cents a dance in Tokyo Japan when Alder, just out of the hospital suffering from combat wounds,meets this hot American chick Nicki, Dina Merrill,that he takes for a spin and soon , within 24 hours, falls madly in love with her. What all this has to do with the story is later explained in that Nicki is somehow connected with the missing and presumed dead Doris Delaney!****SPOILERS**** The film tries to tie all its loose ends together in Doris' disappearance and Alder discovering that he in fact had a close relationship with her without even knowing about it! But it's what turned out to be actor Leroy Dane brother Jacques Plechette, Jacques Aubuchon, who fills in all the info blanks or about this very bazaar and off the wall mystery. Far too long complicated and confusing to go into detail the the final outcome in all this has to do with who knocked up Doris back in 1948 when she was a teenager and set all this into motion. With Aubuchon while not too successful in trying to explain to both Alder and the audience what the heck is going on here he ends up shooting the man responsible for all this In self defense of course to finally put an end to all this craziness.

"Twenty Plus Two" is a stylish, ambitious movie with a great look. It's a shame that it's filmed after the height of film noir, but it still has a few great scenes that are noir-ish, and plenty of night scenes in general. The movie starts off in Hollywood 1961 and follows Tom Alder (actor David Janssen) from coast to coast as he figures out a murder mystery and finds a missing person, all the while dealing with a LOT of different characters. I thought it was really well made.The main problem with "Twenty Plus Two" is the casting of Dina Merrill as the female lead. Her character is about 30 years old at the time of the movie, and in flashback scenes, she's about 20. Merrill was 37 when she made this movie and she looked older. She was hardly believable as a 30-year-old woman, and definitely not as a young 20-year-old. She was badly miscast and it affected the movie.Jeanne Crain fares better as a sort of "girl next door" but fifteen years down the line. She plays Linda, who was engaged to Tom before he was sent to Korea, but married someone else while he was away. Now, 11 years after they last saw one another, she wants him back, but he doesn't want her, and she spends half the movie chasing him. She and Janssen are kind of funny in their scenes together.Agnes Moorehead as the missing girl's mother was superb in her scene with David Janssen. It's a long, pivotal scene. I give credit to both actors as their give-and-take was spot on. There's a lot of dialogue in this movie and these two could really deliver lines.The most stylistic and atmospheric scene in the entire movie is a shot of Tom sitting alone in his hotel room, thinking about the past, smoking, and the camera follows the smoke as it rises to the ceiling. It is fantastic.David Janssen is very, very good in this movie. He's cool, and the film's black and white visuals and jazzy score help to underline this. He should have become a major feature film star. As it was, he became a major TV star, and deservedly so.

David Janssen was an actor who never seemed to be acting. He had a natural, guy-next-door style that works to make a viewer at ease with his characters. Thanks to Janssen's style, TWENTY PLUS TWO works pretty well. The plot of this near-noir is very convoluted, but the director keeps a steady pace and there is enough incidental interest to avoid confusion or boredom. When a Hollywood secretary is found murdered, Tom Alder (Janssen), a "finder of missing persons", is hired to investigate the murder, but quickly sees a link between the secretary and a the long-missing daughter of a wealthy family. Complications involve some colorful characters: Leroy Dane (Brad Dexter), a big movie star, Mrs Delaney (Agnes Moorehead) the missing girl's mother, Jacques Pleschette (Jacques Aubuchon) a shady figure who tries to hire Tom to find his missing brother. All these actors give top drawer performances, with Moorehead a standout for the way she takes complete control of her single scene with Janssen. Excellent too is Dina Merrill as Nikki (her Tokyo-set flashback with Janssen is quite impressive). Also fine in the cast are Jeanne Crain, Robert Strauss, and William Demarest, doing a convincing turn as a down-and-out drunken newspaper man. The only real problem with this engaging film is Gerald Fried's score. It's basically good, and suited to the material, but the main theme, scored for big band, is too brassy and intrusive at too many points. Too much spoiler here must be avoided, but suffice it to say this film could almost be called a lesser VERTIGO, minus Hitchcock's touches of genius. It's unclear what the title refers to, but the story is engrossing enough. Watch this one for the main cast members.

I must admit that I expected more from the Joseph Newman's last picture. I thought that it was an authentic film noir, not necessarily with plenty of action, but intriguing, breathless, well done; with a plot not tepid as the one in this feature.The story of a private eye - Janssen - who investigates on a murder and meets a bunch of protagonists; as usual in this kind of production. An unbelievable tale, and complicated at the most. But the music score, jazzy, is adequate as the surroundings. I think it's the only positive point of view about this movie.David Janssen is also rather good in his character, as Brad Dexter, Agnes Moorehead and Jeanne Crain.In short, it's not a corny picture, but if you miss it, I think you'll be able to live without it.