The rare studio-compromised movie with sloppy enough edits that you can witness the butchery. Who knows what this movie, which the director and star both said was good before the editors got hold of it, could’ve been in its original form, the same year Ray made Rebel Without a Cause. But all we’ve got is what we’ve got, and it ain’t much. MVP the soft-spoken town doctor (Welles regular Gus Schilling), runner-up a grinning Ernest Borgnine, who arrives late as a bank robber, and third place townsperson Squinty McGee, aka Jack Lambert of the same year’s Kiss Me Deadly.
Squinty pulls a knife:
Per Filipe Furtado: “Cagney’s perseverance in front of a life of disappointments is the best use of the actor’s mature strengths in any of his post war roles.” Playing a twice-falsely-accused man, Cagney becomes sheriff of a nowhere town, falls for a Swedish woman (Viveca Lindfors, star of Swedish cinema in the 40’s with a long successful Hollywood run ending in Stargate). Cagney spends most of his time trying to rehabilitate 20-year-old lost soul John Derek (Scandal Sheet), who is simply too handsome for common morality and ends up joining Borgnine in the robbery that leaves Cagney’s new father-in-law dead. The Swede’s dad was probably fourth place – actually Danish, Jean Hersholt had costarred in Greed. Cagney kills the kid, better late than never.
The law of the land, wielding a carved wood gun: