This is, in my opinion, a vastly underrated gem of the film noir genre, and I fervently hope that some day soon it will get the restoration and DVD release it richly deserves.
Victor Mature is often a rather wooden actor, but in this film he plays perfectly against Richard Conte. The two men are like opposite sides of the same coin. Conte the flamboyant, emotional criminal, Mature the tightly controlled police detective; both from the same background and both driven by their different codes of behavior. Conte is a wounded cop- killer on the run who encounters a variety of richly drawn and often bizarre characters in his long flight through the dark streets of the city.
Often in film noir there will be a moralizing speech tacked in towards the end that is supposed to teach some imaginary, incredibly naive audience that "crime doesn't pay." In this film Mature's version of that speech actually rings true. He lists the people Conte has indirectly done harm to and says "He didn't forget them -- he didn't even think of them. He used them and brushed them aside just like he's used everybody he's ever known." There's a depth and honesty in that small speech that rises above its cliché'd origin. To this point we've been following the Conte character as an anti-hero; we believe that for all his criminality, there's some honor to him. But finally we realize that like everyone else, we've been fooled; in reality this character nothing but a hollow and worthless sociopath.
For all the films that have been made about crime and criminals, how often do you see one that actually makes you think about crime and criminals -- much less one that was made so long ago?
Victor Mature is often a rather wooden actor, but in this film he plays perfectly against Richard Conte. The two men are like opposite sides of the same coin. Conte the flamboyant, emotional criminal, Mature the tightly controlled police detective; both from the same background and both driven by their different codes of behavior. Conte is a wounded cop- killer on the run who encounters a variety of richly drawn and often bizarre characters in his long flight through the dark streets of the city.
Often in film noir there will be a moralizing speech tacked in towards the end that is supposed to teach some imaginary, incredibly naive audience that "crime doesn't pay." In this film Mature's version of that speech actually rings true. He lists the people Conte has indirectly done harm to and says "He didn't forget them -- he didn't even think of them. He used them and brushed them aside just like he's used everybody he's ever known." There's a depth and honesty in that small speech that rises above its cliché'd origin. To this point we've been following the Conte character as an anti-hero; we believe that for all his criminality, there's some honor to him. But finally we realize that like everyone else, we've been fooled; in reality this character nothing but a hollow and worthless sociopath.
For all the films that have been made about crime and criminals, how often do you see one that actually makes you think about crime and criminals -- much less one that was made so long ago?