Freshly elected mayor Samuel S. Hinds proceeds to put his racket-busting plans in action, unaware that his
assistant (Lee Bowman, greasy mustache and all) hides ties with mob boss John Litel behind fervid talk-radio
justice rants. When Hinds is blown to bits just as he gets wise to Bowman's weasel-in-a-suit, pushed-around
proletarian Eddie Quillan gets railroaded as fall guy -- until criminology expert Van Heflin and his assistant, snub-nosed perk-machine Marsha Hunt, are brought in from the forensics lab. Imagine Fritz Lang taking off with this
material. Keep imagining, because the director here is Fred Zinnemann, tackling his first feature film but already
dispensing the kind of antibacterial taste and lack of brio that were to circumscribe his whole career. Proficient
but snap-free, the movie tiptoes around bound bodies floating in lakes, institutional corruption and rumbling forces
working from within, but the lenses are much more fascinated by the fadlike gadgetry of microscope-peeping and
test tube-shaking -- any real darkness is held back by a clean, even MGM tidiness. (Zinnemann's Act of Violence,
made with Heflin after the war, delves into notions of inner rot with a far more piercing awareness than the director
could muster here or, for that matter, in any of his other films.) With Cliff Clark, and bit player Ava Gardner taking
carhop orders. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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