The film revolves around an A pickpocket who decided to take a piece of the highly secret microfilm of a Communist agent. This man intends to choose a wallet, and from that moment on his death seems certain justification. It seems that this man may become the main target of the distinguished Communist spy ring.
Fuller's pugnacious direction and his gutter-up view of city life romanticize both the criminal code of honor and the jangling paranoia of global plots; his hard-edged long takes depict underworld cruelty with reportorial wonder ...
It isn't his best, but this 1953 feature may be the archetypal Sam Fuller film, a condensation of his themes and techniques with the steam still rising.
Samuel Fuller's a master of unpretentious hot-house poetry, and that theoretical contradiction of terms gives one an idea of the irresolvable, elegantly compact flourishes that abound in his films.
Sam Fuller, who wrote it and directed, appears to have been more concerned with firing a barrage of sensations than with telling a story to be believed.
Time Out
February 09, 2006
Perhaps finally flawed by its overt political assumptions, but the film remains a desperate kind of masterpiece.
As good as are Widmark, with his proto-Method grin, and Peters, with her tawny, untutored naturalism, this is Thelma Ritter's movie. She transforms what could have been no more than a colorful eccentric to a figure of unshakable dignity.
