Jeff Williams’s review published on Letterboxd:
A Robert Siodmak noir that has many parallels in story, character and cast to Double Indemnity but lacks that film's perfectly written structure, crisp dialogue and well defined, charismatic characters. Certainly, it's unfair to compare the two films, but when there are so many obvious echos, it becomes unavoidable. The biggest issue that TFoTJ has is the absolutely muddled script which lacks sharpness, clarity and any engaging characters. Wendell Corey is unsympathetic, and frankly unlikable, right out of the gate and it's impossible to believe he could have had any appeal for Barbara Stanwyck. Contrast Corey's self-pitying mid-life crisis man to Fred MacMurray's fast-talking, self-confident, situationally amoral bad boy from Double Indemnity and it's like night and day in the magnetism department. One is actually routing for MacMurray's character even though he's doing wrong. Not so for Corey's whining white collar professional who seems to have it all and is nevertheless unhappy and wants to throw it away. Similarly Stanwyck's character seems less than interested and doesn't have any compass character-wise but just drifts in the direction the at-sea script moves her without giving the viewer any reason to attach. By the end, I was mostly apathetic to the fate of any of the story's participants, and despite the good technical aspects of the film, could garner only about as much interest as Corey's character had in his family.