Very impressed with how this interweaves a portrait of small town melodrama with a brewing heist picture. The structure is incredibly clear, deliberate and simple but once all the loose threads converge in the final act, it’s no less satisfying. Warranting comparisons to anything from The Killing to Reservoir Dogs, this is another tough-as-asphalt crime pic punctuated by some brutal violence though it is all offset by a lot of unexpected, compassionate character moments. I can honestly say I enjoyed the bits of the cuckolded husband drowning his sorrows in the local diner as much as the tough guys hunched over their bank robbery blueprints in a shadowy motel. I love genre movies that can be this direct and complex. It’s pretty staggering to consider how many diverse, flat-out fantastic movies Richard Fleischer made without ever achieving auteur status.

Watched on Eureka blu-ray