The Movie:

Directed by Alfred E. Green in 1949 for United Artists, The Cover Up stars Dennis O'Keefe as a man named Sam Donovan. He's an insurance investigator who has been sent off from his home base of Chicago to a small mid-western town (it's never mentioned by name) to investigate a death that the local authorities are claiming was a suicide. He's lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a pretty lady named Anita Weatherby (Barbara Britton) along the way. When he arrives in the snowy town, it's Christmas time. He tries to get as much information out of the town's sheriff, Larry Best, (William Bendix), but the top cop isn't having any of it. He's nice enough about it, but he's always got an excuse as to why he can't give Donovan the information he needs to properly assess the case.

Donovan, however, sees right through this. Determined to do his job properly, he starts snooping around on his own. Throughout all this, he's starting to fall pretty hard for Anita and before you know it, all signs point to romance. That is, until Sam figures that the death wasn't suicide at all, but cold blooded murder perpetrated by none other than the man in charge of the town bank (Art Baker). This makes things with Anita… difficult. Why? Because that man just happens to be her father.

If you take a look at the cover art for this release visible up near the top of this review you'll see artwork that would lead you to believe this is a hardboiled crime film, maybe even a noir, but it's really not. There are elements here but this is more of a dramatic mystery with elements of light comedy and romance thrown into the mix. Having said that, if you keep your expectations in check it's an entertaining picture. Don't expect slick, shadowy interiors or femme fatales hanging out on dark street corners. There are no back alley murders here, just small town folksy charm all set again a Christmas time backdrop that is, for lack of a better word, cute in that small town sort of way. It's all nicely shot and the sets and locations work well in the context of the story to be sure, but yeah, that cover art? Misleading, particularly as it pertains to the last half of the film where the mystery that starts things off takes second place to the softer side of the story.

The performances here are all decent enough. Dennis O'Keefe is top-billed and he makes for a likeable leading man in this role. He's able to be tough when he needs to be but you can see why Anita would be interesting in him. He's handsome, charming and comes across as a genuinely nice guy. O'Keefe played tougher, harder men than Sam Donovan throughout his career and is probably better remembered for those roles but he had good range and that comes through in this performance. He and lovely Barbara Britton share a decent enough chemistry in the film. She too has her charm, portrayed here more as a ‘girl next door type but not without a considerable amount of attractiveness to her character. She was a beautiful woman to be sure but she's more than just a pretty face, she brings her character to life in believable and realistic ways. Some of her dialogue is a little hammy but her delivery is convincing enough.

The real scene stealer here, however, is William Bendix. We know something is up as soon as the sheriff and Donvan meet for the first time (the title of the film kind of gives a lot of this away, actually!) but watching him play his character the way he does is a treat. In a lot of films the outside in the small town is basically asked to leave, not so much here. Instead, Sheriff Best simply makes excuses for why he can't help without actually really refusing to do so. He's got a wolf in sheep's clothing thing going on and Bendix plays the part perfectly.

Video:

The Cover Up makes its Blu-ray from Kino in a nice looking AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.33.1 fullframe. The black and white image shows good contrast, strong black levels and decent shadow detail. Some minor print damage shows up here and there as well as a few scratches but for the most part the image is pretty clean. There are no obvious compression artifacts to be found anywhere during playback while film grain is evident throughout the movie indicating that no noise reduction has been applied here. There are some fluctuations in detail in certain scenes that appear a bit softer than others but this looks like it has everything to do with the camerawork rather than the transfer. All in all, this is a good looking picture that easily surpasses past DVD releases.