By no means true t the actual story of famed bank-robber John Dillinger, but may be true to the personality of the man. Tierney plays Dillinger unromantically as an unredeemable sociopath completely obsessed with getting money on his own terms. His depiction of Dillinger's transformation from punk wannabe to actual cold-hearted thug is completely believable. The supporting cast is all tops, especially Lowe and Elisha Cook Jr. in his best bad-guy performance. The cheap sets, integration of stock-footage, location shooting are all surprisingly effective - only some of the back-screen effects are weak. The script is demandingly tight but both the cast and the director are up for it - despite the fact that the story spreads across some 15 years, it moves right along, intent only on depiction of the high-points of its theme. It's an intentional throw-back to the Warner Bros. gangster films of the early thirties, which makes it top-of-the-line of a wave of crime B-mellers in the late '40s (also dominated by Warner Bros., which studio apparently insisted on this film losing the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, and which, with further irony, now owns its rights). And its hard to imagine a film that makes so much use of violence without any graphic depiction of it.
A true gem of American B-movie history.
A true gem of American B-movie history.