BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

evanston_dad I watched "Decoy" on a Friday and barely remember enough about it to muster up this comment on the following Monday.I'm a devoted film noir lover, and it doesn't take much to satisfy me: I just need a bit of that noir atmosphere, hard-boiled dialogue, and moody cinematography to make one watchable. I don't usually expect much from the plot, since in these kind of movies the plot is many times beside the point. But the entire premise of "Decoy" is just too preposterous to bear. I might have been able to get past that if the other elements of the film had been better, but the acting, especially by Jean Gillie, who's given an "introducing" during the film's opening credits, is terrible, and every other aspect of the film is mediocre at best.Maybe worth seeing for a noir completist but otherwise one to pass by.Grade: D

utgard14 What a great B movie. In the powerful opening minutes, a wounded man hitchhikes to a San Francisco hotel, where he shoots an unarmed woman (Jean Gillie) and dies. While she lay dying, the woman tells a police detective (Sheldon Leonard) the events that led up to this. Her killer was a doctor she had duped into helping her bring her executed convict boyfriend back to life (!) so she could find out where he had stashed some loot. All through her story, it becomes clear this woman is pretty heartless and sadistic. Jean Gillie was married to this film's director. This was his attempt to make her a star. Unfortunately nobody really became a star making pictures for Monogram, no matter how good they may have been. A short time later the pair divorced and Gillie moved back to England. She died there of pneumonia at the age of 33, just 3 years after this was released. Gillie showed how much potential she had in this movie. It's a shame her life was cut so short. Nice to see Sheldon Leonard playing a detective. He was usually playing tough gangsters. He's plenty tough here, even if he is on the right side of the law. Edward Norris and Herbert Rudley are both good. Robert Armstrong, the biggest name in the picture at the time, has little screen time as the executed boyfriend but does well with what he has.Exceptional film noir from Monogram, a Poverty Row studio not known for much that was exceptional. There are a lot of memorable moments in this one. The beginning and ending are really great. The atmospheric scene where Armstrong is brought back to life is another highlight. With a couple of changes this could have easily been turned into a horror movie like The Man They Could Not Hang. It's definitely one you'll want to check out.

Scott LeBrun Good, solid low budget film noir is no "lost classic", but is still a fine example of the genre, that works basically because of its memorable femme fatale, played to grasping, greedy perfection by sultry Brit Jean Gillie, who was given this film vehicle by her then-husband, director Jack Bernhard. She makes the most of it, and is supported by a great bunch of actors. The movie begins with a flourish, and ends equally well, with a neat and twisty tale to tell (scripted by actor / screenwriter Nedrick Young, based on a story by Stanley Rubin) and a respectable amount of mood and atmosphere.Sadly, the lovely Gillie had only time to make one more movie - 1947's "The Macomber Affair" - before dying of pneumonia at the tragically young age of 33. If anything gives "Decoy" a true lasting impression, it's her conniving and crafty character.She plays Margot Shelby, a gang moll who gets shot and fatally wounded in the opening sequence; she dies slowly enough to give hard-nosed, jaded police detective Joe Portugal (Sheldon Leonard, in an excellent performance) her whole sordid story. She was after the money hidden by her mobster boyfriend Frank Olins (Robert Armstrong). Olins had been found guilty of murder and is sentenced to death, but Margot and her other man, Jim Vincent (Edward Norris) learned of a way to revive the dead using a chemical process. As part of the plan, Margot uses a poor sap of a doctor, L.L. Craig (Herbert Rudley).All things considered, this is well directed by Bernhard and always entertaining, and should be worth a viewing for devotees of film noir. It keeps its grip throughout, for a breezy and enticing 76 minute run time.Seven out of 10.

jzappa Decoy has a ridiculous plot. It's about a plot to get a prison doctor to revive a gangster after his death sentence is carried out in the gas chamber so that the gangster's moll can find out the location of money from a heist gone awry. This is pretty far-fetched and I'm not sure I buy it. But the magic of the movie is that I don't buy it now, but when I was watching this petite little B flick, I was thoroughly entertained. It covers the corners of a film noir with all the caricatures and all the frowning settings.This overall ironic noir, now that it's over, feels like a bit of a throwaway. It doesn't do much in the way of originality or freshness. It recycles the same notes to the same tunes we've already heard thousands of times. It just plays them with a different instrument. If this were not very much my type of movie, what with the gangsters, femmes fatale, double-crosses, heist loot, and those sorts, I would hardly have cared about much during. However, since it is, I was entertained for its thankful 76-minute duration.Everything is passable. I think Robert Armstrong has the right look for a gangster street wise enough to take the secret of his loot to his grave. Jean Gillie is a decent gun moll, especially considering that one would hardly guess that she is English. All her sideline squeezes are tough-looking, swarthy men in black suits who look like they were the bullies in junior high, and Herbert Rudley, the everyman prison doctor stuck in the middle, though he is thankfully a no-name, was tolerable as the protagonist.