AllMovie

Forbidden bears traces of several earlier film noirs, with Tony Curtis filling the shoes vacated by the likes of Alan Ladd, Dick Powell and Robert Mitchum. Curtis acquits himself very nicely as a small-time hood sent to Macao by gangster Lyle Bettger to locate Joanne Dru, the widow of another gangster. It will not spoil the film to reveal here that Curtis and Dru fall in love as he escorts her back. Nor is there any surprise in the revelation that hero and heroine decide to dodge Bettger once they learn that they've both been set up for extermination. Forbidden was directed by Rudolph Mate, a former cinematographer who could probably find long, looming shadows in the Sahara Desert at high noon.