Detective Barney Nolan is tired of navigating city streets paved with the scum and detritus of the human animal, so he becomes the Rule of Law in his own concrete jungle. The runaway American Dream remains just out of reach but a $25,000 tax-free windfall ($258,000 in 2024 dollars!) is worth the life of one piece of trash conman. Unfortunately for Barney Nolan, the debt is paid with compound interest in blood and lead!
Edmond O’Brien as Police Lt. Nolan also co-directs this morality tale of police corruption, portraying a 16-year vet at the end of his tether, a cop sick and tired of being sick and tired by a world gone bad. O’Brien fuels his character with self-righteous outrage and explosive anger yet imbues Nolan with a modicum of humanity and kindness, depicting the stolid and dependable man he once was. It’s a great performance that leads one to hope for his redemption even as he makes more fatal mistakes, so when he faces his final justice the sense of loss is profound. Yet so is the sense of his rightly earned poetic justice, a trigger-happy cop showered in a hail of police machine gun fire on the doorstep to his dream home. Sgt. Brewster (John Agar) is a younger version of his mentor, a man not yet tarnished and worn down, who looks to Nolan as a father-figure. The story’s climax doesn’t give us Brewster’s judgment, this act falls to the entire Five-O! Nolan’s paramour Patty (Marla English) ain’t no femme fatale, she’s an honest hard-working American girl caught in this violent nexus. We also get Nolan’s drunken pickup at a local bar in the lovely shape of a blonde and smoking hot Carolyn Jones, and when she’s on screen you can’t take your eyes off of her! Wow. But this is a false lead too, as only Nolan is to blame for his own downfall.
DP Gordon Avil’s work here is reflective of the classic noir tropes. He begins the film with a wonderful low angle tracking shot as we see Edmond O’Brien walking down a deserted city street. His identity and mission not yet revealed, he sees a payout and stalks the man until he pushes him into a dingy alleyway. The man calls him by name and when O’Brien pulls out a revolver with a silencer, shoots the stranger point blank and takes the bundle. Nolan then raises the gun in the air and yells, “Stop! Police!” before firing two rounds. The cold-blooded murderer is a cop! It’s a great setup. There’s another frantic shootout at a high school gym and another brutal pistol whipping that Avil composes and frames to perfection, utilizing sweaty closeups and tracking shots.
I’m left to wonder how Nolan thought he would get away with his plan. He murders the courier in a grimy alley but must have considered the possibility of a witness. Which there is, and he kills this disabled gentleman. How’s that for sympathy? Could he have picked a more isolated spot? And he shoots the guy point blank, but his story is the criminal was running away from him, and a bullet went astray. Into his heart. Wasn’t he concerned about the forensics? And even if the shooting is deemed justified, the bad guys are going to come looking for the cash. Then Nolan plans to buy his dream house for he and his girl, but this seems foolish. How does he explain this to the IRS or even his police cohorts? The answer of course is that he hasn’t thought it through and acted on impulse, and he pays the ultimate price. Lt. Nolan is much like Police Capt. Hank Quinlan who hides behind their badges of evil, and convince themselves that they only hurt bad guys, so what’s the harm? But all good people suffer the consequences of Authoritarian rule.
Final Grade: (B)
