I love it how in crime films everyone talks as though they're in a crime film - tough, slangy dialogue, gritted expression.
I also love it when the villain has a decent plan, which the Mr Big (Preston Foster, who played a mountie in Northwest Frontier) does here - blackmail a bunch of crims into robbing a bank, then bust them and collect the reward money. Only problem is an ex-con who was blamed for the robbery (John Payne, best known as a 20th Century Fox featured lead but not bad here as a tough guy) goes looking for the real culprit.
This gets off to a dynamic start, is very well directed by Phil Karlson, has some wonderful "faces", especially the baddies - Lee Van Cleef, Jack Elam (without a beard) and Neville Brand, that's a top line up in any book. Also the action confrontations, with brief spurts of violence are well done. (Post-Kefauver hearing gangster films all have a particular "vibe" to their violence - corrupt cops, slightly more sadistic, eg The Big Heat).
But the script does get repetitive, particularly the last section in Mexico - there's a confrontation, then another confrontation, then another.
Colleen Gray plays Foster's daughter with a sort of steely-eyed intensity reminiscent of untalented yet determined graduates from acting school you run into every year around the traps of co-op theatres.
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