Alan Ladd is a hard-boiled Postal Inspector sent to Gary, Indiana, voted the world's most beautiful vacation spot, to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of another postal inspector. The body's disposal by Friday and Gannon, I mean Jack Webb and Henry (Harry) Morgan, was observed by a nun, Phyllis Calvert. She's the only person who can identify one of the disposers and her life is in danger. Ladd fakes corruption and manages to join the gang responsible for the murder as they plan yet another million-dollar heist of the US Post Office.
It's one of those edgy stories in which Ladd's real identity and motives might be discovered at any time by the gang. And it DOES have its tense moments when some fast and covert move by Ladd saves his skin.
The endoskeleton is familiar enough from war-time spy movies, and as far as post-war gangster films are concerned it was probably done better in "Street With No Name." There's no nuance here. The bad guys are all bad. The good guys are good. Only Jan Sterling, as the moll of gang leader Paul Stewart, segues from bad to good and back without trouble. Not that she's on either side. She just doesn't care which.
The opening credits imitate the post-war docudramas. A shot of the Post Office Building in Washington, majestic music, a stentorian narrator gives us some statistics and then tells us this is "the biggest business in the world." Somebody must have told the writers that FBI stories were exhausted so let's do a post office one. It's not a bad flick in any way, not an insult to the taste buds, but it's rather routine, with a couple of exceptions.
One exception is the provision of panoramic shots of Gary's beautiful steel mills at a time when they were actually producing steel -- those I beams, those pillars, those cat walks, those smoke stacks, those coal cars loaded with ore, a glimpse of a fiery river of molten steel in the back projection.
Another exception is the writing. While hustling out this pot boiler, the writers have managed to come up with a couple of memorable lines and one or two recherché scenes. Ladd is a pretty cold fish, rude, abrasive. A pal tells him he doesn't know what a "love affair" is. Ladd snaps back, "Sure I do. A love affair is what goes on between a man and a .45 that doesn't jam." (Okay, it's not, "What is money? Just a piece of paper crawling with germs," but it's clever.) And it has resonance too. It's not just thrown in for effect. Because in a later scene, Ladd is trying to give the nun a .45 pistol and it jams during the demonstration. She turns the present down. "Don't forget, I have a guardian angel," she says. "So do I," and Ladd pats his pistol. "Only mine doesn't jam," she observes.
One more example. Ladd is stuck, bored to death, in Jan Sterling's apartment while trying to get some dish out of her. She insists on playing a record of what passes for a sultry blues number. "So that's 'Slow Bus to Memphis'", says Ladd as she weaves sinuously in front of him and he get up to dance. "Yes, can I give you a lift?" Ladd replies, "You already have," and waltzes her slowly toward the bed that's figured so prominently in the background. Fade.
Ladd was always closer to delivering a performance when he had few lines, as in "Shane." Here, he tries to act but his voice acquires a sing song quality as he throws the stress here and there, almost at random, throughout the sentence. At least he looks the part. Henry (Harry) Morgan -- or Harry (Henry) Morgan or whatever it is -- stutters and is a little slow on the uptake. Jack Webb is thin and alert, a kind of human ferret, and his thoughts seem to dart ahead of the situation he finds himself. Paul Stewart is always amiable, cynical, resigned. The climax had me lost, what with the speeding cars, the kidnapped nun, the final shoot out, but it's full of action.
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