Detective Walter Brown is unable to pay off on his five-dollar bet with his dead partner, but he’s soon tempted to take a bigger payoff! This taught and claustrophobic thriller is something special, as Director Richard Fleischer and DP George Diskant punch above their weight class (or more specifically, their budget!) with minimal resources. This is a tale told on a train that speeds along like a tempest from the Windy City to the City of Angels.
Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and his partner Gus Forbes (Don Beddoe) are two Chicago cops assigned a shit detail: transporting Mrs. Neil (Marie Windsor), a gangster’s widow, safely so she can produce a “payoff list” to the LA Grand Jury. Not knowing what to expect, Brown wagers that she is a walking piece of trash, a typically toxic femme fatale, while Forbes believes she may be a nice girl caught up with a bad dude, someone they shouldn’t rush to judge. Unfortunately for the girthy Forbes, all he collects is hot lead in his guts! Soon, Brown and the sultry Mrs. Neil secret away on a one-way trip of clacking steel tracks and the clicking steel chamber...of a revolver! Hunted by mob hit men, the only ace up their sleeve is that Mrs. Neil is faceless to their pursuers, a woman without identity other than a moniker. A chance encounter allows Brown a respite, as he begins an innocent relationship with a mother and her little boy, but he fears she will be mistakenly targeted by the mobsters. To this admixture comes a rotund Constable whose loyalty is undisclosed, a mobster with an offer Brown can’t afford to lose, a narrative twist that’ll knock your socks off, all served on a nice warmly toasted McGuffin.
DP George Diskant’s photography is the very essence of film noir: low-key lighting, deep shadows, skewed and tight compositions, with sudden violence and tension like punctuation on a toe tag. The first act depicts a stairway scene were Brown and Forbes bookend their contraband, and Diskant shows us a silhouette obscured by darkness, a lone gunman, and we get a low angle shot looking up the stairs as Forbes takes his fatal slug. A quick chase through litter strewn alley and a jump over a high fence ends abruptly for Brown, his quarry speeding away in a getaway car. And the film doesn’t slow down. The denouement involves a reflection in the window of a passing train to target the gangster behind a locked door. Wow! Not only is this a physically confined story but it becomes emotionally claustrophobic due to the visual structure of each scene and individual shot! This is all built upon the Academy Award nominated screenplay by Earl Felton which creates the pacing and allows the characters to chew the venomous dialogue to shreds. Out-fucking-standing. The acting is also first-rate, from Charles McGraw and his square-jawed intensity to Marie Windsor and her seemingly toxic femininity.
Brown retains his dignity and his job, proving his integrity to a woman who was married to the mob. Together, they walk towards a brighter future. But for whom?
Final Grade: (A)
