Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

clanciai Nothing happens in this rather bleak and sordid noir about Chicago gangsters, until Alison Hayes pulls the gun in the middle of the film, and then the action starts, amounting to rather interesting proportions. Dennis O'Keefe is no William Holden, who would have been the right actor for this role - Dennis is too fidgety. Paul Stewart on the other hand is perfect for his character, and the other ladies are good as well, Abbe Lane as the night club primadonna in decline with a catch on the boss, and his mother. The best scenes are with these women, while it is Alison Hayes who runs the show from half way on. The finale approaches the depths of "The Third Man".So although you yawn and look for something else to do meanwhile during the first half of the film, the second half must have all your attention. The dialog is riveting and splendid all the way, even Xavier Cugat gets a role to play and not only instruments, so it's after all a film well worth seeing.

David (Handlinghandel) This is a great little crime movie. It has a truly sleazy feel and is very well directed. Fred Sears! That guy knew how to turn out these trashy but effective crime exposes! Dennis O'Keefe, who seems a little down-at-the heels, is the lead. He goes undercover to blow the lid off a syndicate run by mama's boy Paul Stewart. With his eyes sunken and dark, Stewart is a highly effective villain (albeit a suave one.) His current girlfriend sings at a club he runs. We hear her sing, and she is pretty darn good. That's because she's played by Abbe Lane. Lane had a good vocal style and she knew how to be sewn into a glamorous dress. Real-life husband Xaviar Cugat is on-hand, too: He's her band-leader and is pining after her.Though she gets lower billing, the main female is really Allison Hayes. Yes: The star of the immortal "Attack of the 50-Foot Woman." Hayes does a fine job. She's an interesting presence: She looks like a meaner version of Jane Russell.The only distracting part of the movie is the O'Keefe character's name: Barry Amsterdam. It kept reminding me of a certain comic on a classic TV show about writers for a TV comedy ...O'Keefe had the goods, though. He is one of the best of all noir actors.

sol1218 (Some Spoilers) With an iron clad grip on the "Windy City" the criminal organization known as "The Syndicate" run by Arnie Valent seemed untouchable until one of it's accountants Nelson Kern got a bit religious and went to the local newspaper the Chicago Telegraph to expose it's criminal operations.Getting the editor of the newspaper David Healey to agree to publish his story, under an assumed name, Kerns is shot on the street as soon as he leaves the building. With the police as well as the editors of all the city's newspapers agreeing that "The Syndicate" is to be put out of business before it becomes any more entrenched that it already is it's agreed to get Internal Revenue auditor, and WWII combat hero, Barry Amsterdam to do the job for them.Barry at first is anything but interested in taking on "The Snydicate" but when he's offered $60,000.00, by the city fathers, he's more then willing to stick his neck out. With that $60,000.00 Barry can open up his own accountant agency something he's been dreaming about since he got out of the service. With the knowledge, that he got from the Chicago PD, of who it was that gunned down Kern, a hit-man named Burke, Barry get's in touch with Valent in an attempt to blackmail him in the fact that Berke works for him. Barry putting on an act that he's disenchanted with his job as an IRS auditor instead ends up getting the very job that the late Nelson Kern had looking after and accounting for all of Valent's, and his syndicate's, holdings and transactions.The movie moves at a snails pace with Barry Amsterdam trying to get the goods on Valent and his criminal activities but the old timer, the last of Chicago's Al Capone Gang, is just too slick and slippery to get nailed in a Federal tax evasion, like his former boss "Big Al" Capone, rap. Just at one point when Barry thought he had Valent caught red handed at his mothers tenement apartment with the goods, his secret ledgers, Valent burned them moments before the cops, tipped off by Barry, came crashing into the place.Barry uses the two women in the cast singer Connie Peters and the late Nlson Kern's daughter Joyce to uncover what Kerns had on Valent's by a number of secret rolls of microfilm, containing the contents of the destroyed ledgers, that Kern had made just before he was gunned down.When Valent realizes that his moll Connie had the microfilm hidden as a life insurance policy for herself instead of destroying them like he told her he completely loses it. Having his henchmen work Connie over to find out where the microfilm is it's Connie's friend, as well as lover, band leader Benny Chico who tells Valent where the rolls of film is; Hidden in a violin case that's being held for him, for safe keeping, at a local pawn shop. Benny had no idea what was in the case until he found out that Connie, who gave it to him, had made as well as kept the very incriminating, for Valent and his syndicate, microfilm.Despite being both cool calm as well as collective all throughout the movie Arnie Valent loses himself when he realizes that for once he's about to be busted, with none of his flunkies taking the rap for him! Valent overreacts when Barry, who was at the pawn shop with him and his hoods, pulled the rolls of film right out of his hands before, like he did with the ledgers earlier, he could burn them.Instead of letting his hood chase down Barry and both murder him and get the film back Valent decides to do the job himself. This leaves him open to being both arrested by the police, who were tailing Barry, or ending up getting shot and killed by them. Barry badly wounded, from being shot in the leg by Valent, ends up making it to the Chicago slums where Valent's mother resides and it's there, outside his mom's tenement, that Valent life of crime, as well as "The Syndicate", came to a sudden and violent end.

gary olszewski A cheesy "B" crime thriller of the early '50, the story is droll, the characters wooden, Allison Hayes and Abbe Lane are the only two sexpots that make it an eye-catcher, but one short shot, only a few frames long, shows an "el" train crossing the river on the State Street bridge, of the 6000 series Pullman-built cars painted in their original 1950 paint scheme, as they were delivered when new in 1950. For traction fans like me, that one short take makes the picture worthwhile. I think films like this one, Ulmer's DETOUR, D.O.A. with Edmund O'Brien,THE FUGITIVE with Harrison Ford, and others of the film noir genre, (big city crime dramas) make it interesting if for nothing other than the fact that I know Chicago and San Francisco intimately and recognize most of the street locations. Other wise it's a really droll boring film!