This cheapie noir thriller about crooked district attorneys and gangster chiefs is surprisingly good, considered it was made on a zero budget with no reason to aim high. Of course, it is completely corny, but there are a lot of expressionistic camera angles, and the many dollying shots of men walking at night are surprisingly effective with a single bright spotlight on the face and everything else pitch black. As is usual with these over the top late forties cheapies, the impact depends largely upon an excessive, almost parodic, use of 'mood music'. When things begin to get dangerous, don't worry about looking for clues on the screen, as the orchestra will tell us instead. One wonders if the script actually said: 'At this point, the musical score will become hysterical, so that the audience knows someone is about to get killed.' The chief reason for watching this film is to see and hear the spectacular performance on the piano of Gene Rodgers, a black boogie player who was one of the best. It is jaw-dropping stuff. Fats Waller, eat your heart out! Rodgers plays two of his own compositions, 'Ballad of the Bayou' and 'Rajah's Blues'. His fingers move faster than the speed of light, and he isn't even looking. If only the whole thing had been Rodgers, we could have done without the film. The film's script is surprising in its ingenuity in places, and has some snappy dialogue, showing that somebody tried. The most innovative scene is where an assistant district attorney dictates a letter to his secretary. It is a passionate love letter proposing marriage, and she wonders to whom he intends to send it. He asks her if she thinks it is OK, and she says she thinks it is beautiful. Then he tells her it is for her! Great scene! If only the romance had been genuine, however, as both turn out to be crooks in their own way. This film contains serious contradictions, as it oscillates between making some characters appear sympathetic and then suddenly exposing them as baddies. The story must have started out as a tough crime thriller and then some frustrated sentimentalist wrote the script and could not help himself, he just had to have some love scenes, and the fact that the characters were all wrong for this could not and would not deter him. The producer clearly didn't notice. Well, if you like brilliant boogie, you really can't afford to miss this. And there will be people who will also enjoy the film. It is all a matter of what you expect, and if you start out expecting a corny mini-budgeted noir thriller with some unexpected good points, you will be happy.
