Great acting and a general air of grime (probably due to the location shooting on the streets and in the tenements and warehouses of Brooklyn long before it was gentrified) make up for a plot that no one can follow or care about...something about diamonds and double crosses...and an awful tacked on happy ending...in the burbs, no less! Standing out in the fine cast are Zachary Scott, in the lead, very convincingly playing a dipso ex cop who always seems on the edge of falling apart for good, the blacklisted Group Theatre alum J Edward Bromberg as a gangster with high blood pressure (a common occupational hazard, one would think) and most of all, in my opinion, Mary Boland, long after her glam 1930s days, playing the mother of all sleazy landladies. Give it a B.
Review of Guilty Bystander
