Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

bkoganbing In Shield For Murder Edmond O'Brien is tired of being a straight arrow cop. One night he murders a numbers runner and steals %25,000.00 from him. Of course his official version is that he was resisting arrest, but the bookmaker played by Hugh Sanders knows he's out all that money and he'll get it back one way or another.O'Brien is perfectly cast as the aging detective sick and tired of seeing crooks grow rich. His problem is that he's grown such contempt for the human race he thinks that he's the smartest guy out there. Never credits the crooks or the cops with an ounce of intelligence. That is his downfall.John Agar is his protégé and still a straight arrow. The undercurrent running through the film is that while Agar is trying to catch O'Brien will he fall victim to the same cynicism?Some other noteworthy performances in Shield For Murder are from Marla English as O'Brien's troubled girlfriend, Carolyn Jones as a bar girl he has a small fling with, Claude Akins as one of Sanders's hoods and Emile Meyer as the precinct captain.But Edmond O'Brien is something to see here. In a really crackerjack noir thriller.

LeonLouisRicci By 1954 Film-Noir was starting to show signs of transforming to a style that had more to do with the sociological and less to do with the psychological. Although the bad cop here definitely has had a psychotic break, the film is concerned more with the external ramifications and less with the internal intent and motivation.A crisp looking and sometimes brutal Police Story finds that dangling the man's "Castle" in front of him may not always be enough to entice some to play by the rules. It seems that even nine years on the force has not paid enough to comfortably attain the American Dream. Even his lady friend seeks employment as a leggy cigarette girl to pay the bills.There may be one too many lines reassuring us that this type of cop is really an anomaly, and when we do find one we will tell all and call in the press (yeah right). But aside from this and a preachy reporter (we know he's a righteous man because he smokes a pipe) this is quite a good hard-boiled thriller with noble intent.

sol ***SPOILERS*** In a role that very possibly inspired the "Psycho Cop" series of movies of the 1990's Edmond O'Brian as the sweaty disheveled and bug eyed LA police detective Barney Noland is about as rotten and barbaric as any film or TV policemen ever seen up to that time. Murdering without conscience Barney not only guns down an innocent bookie, Kirk Martin,to grab his $25,000.00 bankroll he's given by his boss Packy Reed, Hugh Sanders, but murders by wringing his neck and throwing him down a flight of stairs deaf mute Ernest Sternmuller,David Hughes. That's in that Sternmuller is the one person who can identify Barney in Martin's murder.Working his way up in the LAPD as a Let. Detective the pay, about $100,00 a week, wasn't enough for Barney's future plans to marry 20 year old, some 20 years Barney junior, cigarette girl Patty Winters, Maria English and get a house out in the suburbs. So when Barney got a tip that Martin was loaded with cash he jumped at it not caring what the consequences were going to be. It was Barney's good friend at the LAPD Detective Sgt. Mark Brewster, John Agar, who by getting to the bottom, of the stairs, of deaf mute Sternmuller's death who figured out that his good friend and mentor Barney Noland murdered him! As well as him being the person who murdered bookie Kirk Martin!Barney also takes time to brutally pistol whip private detectives Fats Michaels & Laddie O'Neil, Claud Akins & Lawrence Ryle, who were hired by Mob Boss Packy Reed to checkup on him at a local spaghetti joint where he picked up boozy Carolyn Jones, wearing a blond wig, for a date. In the end it was Fats, with his head bandaged like Lon Cheney Jr in the "Mummy's Curse", who tried to murder Barney at a local YMCA where he was suppose to get the tickets and ready cash from mobster Mannings, Michael H. Cutting, for him & Patty to check out of the country to South America.***SPOILERS*** Now on the run from both the law and the mob Barney is finally gunned down in a hail of bullets by the LA police lead by his good friend Det. Sgt. Breswter in front of the house that he hoped to buy with his ill gotten gains, the $25,000.00 in bookie money, for him and Patty to spend the rest of their lives living in. It's a shame that Edmond O'Brian wasn't given more psycho type roles like the one in "Shield for Murder" in him being so good in playing one. By then I would guess he was far too old and chubby to be convincing in playing psychos leaving them up to younger actors like Anthony Perkins to get to be cast in them.

Eric Chapman There are some similarities here with a great B-level film made close to 40 years later "Miami Blues". Both focus on desperate, lawless men with soft spots for a pretty, child-like woman, who abuse the power of a police badge in a violent, supremely ill-advised attempt to settle into a comfortable, anonymous existence in the "paradise" of America's suburbs. And as with "Blues", the last 30 minutes are as frantic and exciting and darkly comic as anything you will see.The film isn't perfect. There are weak links in the cast: Marla English is unremarkable as the trusting girlfriend, Herb Butterfield doesn't register as a pesky reporter (and John Agar's nagging conscience), and I found snarling Emile Meyer to be a disproportionately cynical police captain consumed with disgust for mankind. But Edmond O'Brien is suitably sweaty and hard-boiled as the corrupt cop (though damn, he is one puffy and bloated leading man), Agar is fine as his conflicted protegee (just before Agar moved into his mostly bad sci-fi phase) and Carolyn Jones spices things up big-time as a spaghetti loving floozy.Starts off looking sort of cheap and routine but it's one of those films that sneaks up and surprises you. Not bad at all. A little like Richard Gere's "Internal Affairs" too, come to think of it.