A well-planned robbery goes awry, with tough cop Cordell in pursuit. Dave Purvis has pulled off an armored-car robbery with engineering precision, and has a few details to tend to before boarding a chartered airplane to take him to a life of ease and comfort; first he shoots a wounded gang-member, whose wife he is bedding, tosses another one to the police and betrays a third and is nearly home free. However, Los Angeles Police Lieutenant Jim Cordell, using his brain and playing hunches, and making use of the police department's scientific network of laboratory, switchboard, radio-patrol cars, wire-tapping and recording devices is closing fast. A good low-budget noir. (Though the budget looks pretty darn low, it has a lot of big names.) The plot itself is somewhat routine. Cps vs bad guy. Really bad leader vs his underlings. The matter-of-fact title tells a whole lot of the story.<br/><br/>However, Adele Jergens is the draw here. She plays a burlesque dancer. (And we see her routine a couple times. Even today, it looks tawdry.) Though this came out before my time, newsstands kept girlie magazines from years and years – decades, even – in stock. I remember as a kid wondering about the weird shoes these women were posing in. Well, Adele Jergens looks like the quintessential bleached-blonde naughty girl of the 1950s-60s. And she was a good actress, too.<br/><br/>More of her would have leavened the plot./ As it is, it's too many guys who look and sound alike – all of them fine actors but enough gets to be enough. ***SPOILERS*** Yes, I agree with the other reviewers. It is a shiny bauble in the cheap costume jewelry of the cheap floozie as girlfriend, and cheap suited detectives that turn her out. Yeah, she was cheaply pretty in a crummy sort of way…. yeah, you get the picture. I just accidentally saw this dark diamond on TCM's Noir Alley (if you're gonna write about or do a film noir, ya gotta have an alley); It is great. Both the movie, and the TCM series.<br/><br/>The point I'd make is that I knew right away that they were gonna get caught when Purvis didn't finish Ryan. It's a giveaway. Problem they had back then was that the Hollywood censorship authorities had a rule about crime not paying. Still, I wonder if the sweet, sexy tramp was charged and convicted, or if she turned state's witness. I wonder if any cops picked up some extra cash when nobody was looking. After all, it WAS being blown around on the airfield runway, wasn't it? Extra retirement fund, you might say… just wondering, you know. Interesting about Charles McGraw MUCH more interesting than Dr. Phil, wouldn't you say)? IMDB has him on file. <br/><br/>I just ragged on "Better Call Saul" in another review, and this is a great reason why. It seems that Hollywood forgot how to make tight, close quarters dramas. Now, they cram commercials down your throat, and treat you like you don't matter, and You take it. Protest it and demand a return to great entertainment. THIS production is, and will remain a 10.
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293 weeks ago