A film noir from 1948 starring Laurence Tierney & directed by Richard Fleischer (Fantastic Voyage/20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). A cop is fired from his position for being a loose cannon but immediately a man has an offer for him to be a bodyguard for a widow who runs a meatpacking empire. At first reluctant, he meets his client & almost the moment he says 'no' shots ring out from an attempt on her life. Naturally he agrees but when one night he sees the widow leave the house, he follows & for his troubles gets knocked out from behind & wakes up w/his ex boss next to him murdered while his car stands in the path of an oncoming freight train. Escaping w/his wits, Tierney knows the fix is in so he avoids any law enforcement entanglements as he tries to clear his name which is tied to the accidental death of a meat inspector from a year before but after some judicious digging, we find out the death was a murder. As we circle in on the who & the why, Tierney, assisted by his girlfriend, played by Priscilla Lane (who works at the homicide office), gets the information he needs & races to confront the killer before he can put his mitts on Lane who has let her bout of private eye go to her head. Not the typical noir which usually languishes on the downbeat side of the human condition, this yarn moves at a quick pace (credit Fleischer's nimble direction for that) w/a healthy modicum of humor (a scene where Tierney has to listen to a stack of recordings detailing his ex boss's arrests is a lesson in comedic patience) thrown in whenever things feel like they're becoming a bit too rote. Tierney is quite bouncy in the lead (a complete opposite to his rather tumultuous drunken fist-fighting self he was in real life) but not above throwing a haymaker to get his point across.
