When a hard working longshoreman (Mickey Shaugnessy) is shot in cold blood on his way to work on the Brooklyn waterfront, it becomes up to idealistic young district attorney Richard Egan to put all the pieces together and pin it on mob activity. Witnesses are too scared to come forward, even Shaugnessy's own wife (Jan Sterling), and the case has an impact on Egan's personal life with beautiful fiancee Julie Adams who understands his need to find justice but understandably wishes that this case had come about at a different time in their lives. Egan becomes a man obsessed, meeting with local mob boss Walter Matthau (in an early, very intense performance) and finds him going up against an ingenious defense attorney (Dan Duryea) who twists the facts that Egan has presented to his multiple client's own defense. Even the victim, recovering in the hospital with only a small chance of survival, has his own fears, and perhaps as the audience witnessed in the gritty confrontation scene in the beginning, he knows that he is a doomed man irregardless of the outcome.
Aided by the famous Richard Rodgers score from the ballet which climaxed the 1936 musical "On Your Toes", that music is played throughout (also brilliantly recreated for the 1948 Rodgers/Hart bio musical "Words and Music") in a haunting, sinister manner. This film features gritty location photography that focuses on the Brooklyn waterfront with Manhattan seen from beyond and the editing is equally outstanding. It's nice to see Egan and Adams together here, reunited years later on the daytime soap "Capitol" where Adams played the scheming friend of his character's wife. Sterling, unforgettable in "Ace in the Hole" (aka "The Big Carnival") as a floozy femme fatale, underplays her performance, and Adams adds underlying support to a character who could have seemed self serving and inconsequential to the main plot. However, the great performances by Egan and especially Matthau are the spark that keeps this East River set melodrama flowing, and a conclusion with a minor dock worker character witnessing the culminating confrontation and walking off slowly puts a mark on it that will leave you haunted.
Aided by the famous Richard Rodgers score from the ballet which climaxed the 1936 musical "On Your Toes", that music is played throughout (also brilliantly recreated for the 1948 Rodgers/Hart bio musical "Words and Music") in a haunting, sinister manner. This film features gritty location photography that focuses on the Brooklyn waterfront with Manhattan seen from beyond and the editing is equally outstanding. It's nice to see Egan and Adams together here, reunited years later on the daytime soap "Capitol" where Adams played the scheming friend of his character's wife. Sterling, unforgettable in "Ace in the Hole" (aka "The Big Carnival") as a floozy femme fatale, underplays her performance, and Adams adds underlying support to a character who could have seemed self serving and inconsequential to the main plot. However, the great performances by Egan and especially Matthau are the spark that keeps this East River set melodrama flowing, and a conclusion with a minor dock worker character witnessing the culminating confrontation and walking off slowly puts a mark on it that will leave you haunted.