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Protraph Lack of good storyline.

PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

George Wright This film from 1950 is a highly entertaining police story where the police plot their strategy to outsmart the criminal as they tenaciously pursue him. The criminal is played by Lyle Bettger, who gives an excellent performance. Barry Fitzgerald once again plays the Irish cop with the twinkle in his eye. Barry Fitzgerald's acting seemed to define the stereotype of the Irish cop and he was by far the best of the lot. The sustained action, the excellent acting and on-location shooting still give this movie great entertainment value some 62 years later. William Holden, playing the lead, is convincing as the tough cop who develops a romantic interest in Nancy Olson, the secretary to the wealthy father of a blind girl who figures in the plot. The action is almost non-stop as the movie rolled along. The location of the movie is a question mark; some say New York, others Los Angeles. I took the location to be Chicago because of the elevated railway, the stockyards, and even a Union Station - although the one here was actually in Los Angeles. Regardless of location, this is a very good story and although dated, I would gladly watch it again.

Scott_Mercer No, I am not referring to the quality of the film. Merely the fact that the film is set in a fictional, non-place. Apparently the novel that served as the source material was set in New York City.The train carrying Nancy Olson's character was coming from "Westhampton," leading one to suspect New York. However, there is no "Union Station" in New York, and never was. The actual station we see is not a set, but is in fact Union Station in Los Angeles, opened only 10 years prior to this film being shot (although the railroad police station office above the main entrance behind the screen is fictional...that space is actually outside the building floating in mid- air). The station still looks remarkably the same today, if you would like to visit and relive this film. Apparently there are some elevated trains adjacent to this station in the film though, which rules out Los Angeles as the setting. Los Angeles never had any elevated trains (well until 2003, anyway). One of the crooks tries to get away on an elevated train, leading to a shootout in a cattle stockyard. Leads me to believe this sequence must have been shot in Chicago. The name of the city is never mentioned in the movie, I believe. The station opens directly on a crowded city street of brownstone buildings, played by a studio back lot. Also fictional, as Los Angeles Union Station was/is surrounded by parking lots and a large post office, not brownstones. There's also an intersection of "21st and Mulberry." New York has both a 21st Street and a Mulberry Street, but they do not intersect. I believe that the underground freight train depicted in the film (like glorified ore carts in a mine) did not exist either, and was a set built on a sound stage, but a similar system did exist...in Chicago.Anyway, all these pedantic matters aside, this is a really enjoyable film. It is a quite straightforward police procedural, and nobody is attempting to reinvent the wheel here. You might say that Holden's talents are wasted in what is ultimately a rather slight and simple (but satisfying) story, but Holden certainly does not embarrass himself, does not "talk down" to the audience or the material, and it does not feel like he is "slumming" here. Nancy Olson is satisfactory, nothing more. Barry Fitzgerald does his usual shtick, but is a comforting presence. We do get the typical noir look of the times, BUT, this is not a film noir as such, as the moral tone is straight black and white. No shades of gray here. The good guys are really good, and the bad guys are really bad. Yes, the good guys are unafraid to use violence to extract a confession, but they do so with no doubts, assured in the rightness of their goals, even if their methods are identical to the thugs they are pursuing. Sure, we in the audience may not be convinced that roughing up a goon and threatening to kill his ass by throwing him in front of a train barreling down the tracks is such a great move, but the cops in the film have no such questions.Railroad fans will really enjoy its glimpse of a great American railroad terminal in its prime. Film noir and crime drama fans will most likely like how the plot unfolds, even if there is no question how things will end: the bad guys lose and the good guys win, nobody getting killed but the bad guys, and the good guys suffering only minor, easily-recoverable injuries.

dougdoepke Back when America took the train for out-of-town travel, depots were full of hustling, bustling travelers, rather like today's airports. Judging from the opening scenes, you might think half the folks in those stations were petty criminals and the other half were there to catch them. Actually, the movie's a pretty good thriller. The railroad cops are led by Holden who's after a kidnapping gang who've grabbed a blind girl (Allene Roberts), while Barry Fitzgerald heads the local cop contingent.There are some good imaginative touches, such as the stockyard scene, and the final chase through an underground tunnel. These, along with some good location photography and a documentary style approach, help build a general air of suspense. However, the documentary style is also interrupted by rather obvious studio sets, a none-too-convincing romance between Olson and Holden, and the un-cop like musings of Fitzgerald as comedy relief. Thus we're also reminded at critical points that this is, after all, only a movie.The film has gone down in history books for one particularly memorable scene. In the train station, the cops have caught a gang confederate and need to make him tell the where-abouts of the kidnapped girl. At first, the suspect feigns innocence. Now, in standard films of the day, sentencing pressure would have been brought to bear-- how the guy risks execution should harm befall the girl, along with maybe some mild pushing around. Not here. Instead, the guy is hauled into a back room and rather brutally beaten-- already a big departure from the norm. When he still refuses to talk, he's dragged out onto the tracks, where Holden and company dangle him before an on-rushing locomotive. Wild now with fright, the suspect spills his guts. To my knowledge, this is either one of the only films of the time, if not the only one, to show cops not only beating a suspect, but torturing him as well. It comes as a startling departure from what audiences had come to expect from the forces of law and order. How it got past the censors is beyond me.Of course, we already know the guy is a gang member, so we may want to excuse the extreme police methods. But keep in mind that movies are inherently a medium of manipulation. A good film-maker can make an audience root for almost anything or anybody if he loads the deck correctly. Suppose in this case the movie hadn't tipped us off early about the guy's guilt, and suppose the guy turned out to be innocent instead. Would we feel the same way about the police methods. I doubt it, but however you respond, this remains an entertaining 90 minutes with a particularly fine performance from Roberts as the trapped blind girl.

edwagreen In the same year that William Holden and Nancy Olson earned Oscar nominations for "Sunset Boulevard," they both appeared in this crime thriller.When Olson observes the forever villainous Lyle Bettger with a gun, the action begins. Olson and his gang have kidnapped a wealthy blind girl. A faux pas in the film is when the father shows pictures of the girl when she is between 12-13 years of age. At that time she had her sight but she looks more like she is 21 years old there.Jan Sterling shows that she had what it takes as Bettger's moll who takes a bullet during a shoot out with a police officer. Sterling's voice comes across as the typical dumb blonde.The Bettger character is a mean spirited thief driven to murder for $100,000. The below the subway sequences are very good even though we know how this will all turn out.William Holden smokes his way as usual, this time as the cop assigned to the station. Barry Fitzgerald showed his mettle again playing a police officer. He seemed to get these parts after the memorable "Going My Way." Fitzgerald's Irish brogue is so suitable for the part.Why is Nancy Olson still in harms way after she has informed the police about the dangerous Bettger and after they begin to eliminate the members of the ruthless gang?