It's another film based on Case Files done by the FBI. Particularly revolving around one agent Zack Stewart who worked not on one case but three. Originally he only has two cases, but his third comes to him in the middle of the night. When a scared woman informs him that she's being blackmailed by a mysterious figure over the phone. A man wants her to withdrawal $10,000 and insurance money she had after her husband's death. The mysterious man threatens to kill her daughter if she doesn't comply. Now agent Zach has his third case of which were informed by a voice-over is a common occurrence for an FBI agent. For they take on multiple cases at once. Everything seems to be going well. He's acquiring information from all his contacts, he's setting up appointments for further investigation and it seems he may even have a lead on the black male suspect. But then right when the First Act is about to end agent Zach is shot.
Now a new FBI man (Broderick Crawford) is on the scene not only does he have to deal with the initial 3 cases of his predecessor but he has to discover the murder of him as well.
He has a difficult task of reassociating himself with all the former clients and some of the former leads. Which might seem simple enough but a couple of these people are real characters. Like the over-sized bronzy boxer who has the incredible talent to beat up blind women (a real Class Act). Or an overly dramatic woman who portrays herself as some sort of movie star using her charm and veneer as a way of manipulating other people. And sometimes just as away to try and get money out of them. At least until she discovers that the man she loved will seeing other women on the side.
The film's greatest strength lies in the three individual cases. Each one maintaining its own beginning middle and end, In theory this should keep the movie moving at solid and fast pace. But unfortunately there's a bit in the middle (a good 15 minutes worth) that just kind of lingers. This has to do with one of the three cases just not being that interesting. Oh the idea behind it's not so bad. A man who's hiding from the FBI because he may have associations with stolen cars and the only lead the FBI has is a blind woman who hasn't heard from her husband in a couple of weeks. For the most part this makes everything very problematic, she can't identify certain people, she has no idea where anybody is. However her ending confrontation with the boxer who tries to assault her leads her to being the greatest asset of all. That she can retail information of The Man's height, facial feature and even smell better than anybody with sight.
Or so I thought the case with the blind woman was the one that came off as a bit doll. But I completely forgot about the other case involving the over-the-top actress lady who secretly sneak out of Los Angeles to find her lover living in some crappy Shack somewhere. The whole thing ends up in a shooting match between him and two FBI agents. It's also fun to know that this movie at no point has anybody shoot their guns more than what they should be able to. That is to say I counted every shot, nobody over exceeds their limit. Most of the FBI agents are carrying very large 5 or 6 cylinder revolvers and none of them ever over fire. Nor do any of the criminals over fire although most of them are carrying small revolvers.
The film feels a little dated, I had thought that this was an early forties film and it's only later that I realised it was made in 1953 some of the vehicles towards the end of the film should have given this away though. Still it just seems strange to me. The last FBI movie I watched seem like it was ahead of the time and now they're starting to become a bit stagnant.
It's also slightly misleading, it opens on the shot of the U.S. Parliament building in Washington DC but then two minutes later Cuts over to a small Road 45 miles outside of small City Las Vegas on its way to California.
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