Nocturne (1946)

There's a film that came out this year with the same title, but this is a noir film with George Raft, who I didn't know anything about, but apparently he's the kind of actor that figures playing the same character he always does, but having that character live with his ma and let her cook dinner for him, while otherwise being a sneering bully, is demonstrating range.

A songwriter is shot in the head after spending the first several minutes of the film explaining to a woman on his couch that he's breaking up with her, but that she's the inspiration for this song, and as my dad noted, it was pretty understandable why someone would kill this asshole after listening to him talk for more than 20 seconds. But the killer somehow has convinced the cops that he shot himself, except for Raft's character, who starts trying to track down the old girlfriends.

In no time at all, his methods manage to piss off enough people that he's being warned off by the chief. Barging backstage at a burlesque show, wrecking a diner's player piano, and questioning the wife of a city councilman will do that for ya. Right about the time that happens, Raft gets a note about a complaint of a peeping tom. I thought it was against him, but apparently it led to a clue. Go figure.

Raft doesn't get much of anywhere for a long time. He keeps questioning one woman, and her sister who is a singer at nightclub, and the piano man at the club (who looks a whole lot like Two and a Half Men star Jon Cryer, which I was not expecting and found kind of strange), who knew the victim. There's also a big goon named Torp who works there and follows Raft around, doing a horrible job of not being noticed. He gets comically angry when Raft rips all the buttons off his jacket to make sure he's not armed. The awkward hostility between Raft and Torp (Bern Hoffman) is one of the high points. Torp clearly hates his guts, but is stuck in situations where he can't just finish him off like he wants. And Raft leverages that with a lot of sneering contempt, even after Hoffman does kick his ass once.

The story wasn't much, and Raft isn't any good at playing a character you would actually want to root for, but that made it fun to laugh at how many poor decisions he was making, so that's something.