So this is a Fritz Lang movie, but it’s a post-WW2 movie done in the Hollywood system. And so what’s interesting about that is, whereas Metropolis and M seem very distinctive with their German expressionist stylings, this feels like a fairly standard noir.

But of course, that’s the whole thing with noir, is that these German directors brought their style to the crime genre and created a distinctive visual aesthetic, and so Lang isn’t really doing Just Another Noir, he’s one of the formative directors of classic noir. So yeah, it is distinctively Langian, just in a way that’s been thoroughly absorbed and recontextualized.

So beyond that, one of the surprising things in this movie is that it has some really strong female characters. Like, yeah, the main character is a cop who’s too honest/dumb to just close his eyes to corruption, but his wife is one of the movie’s most vivid characters, and other women drive key moments in the story.

And that story is interesting and has real narrative momentum. The movie is a brisk 90 minutes, and it just moves relentlessly forward. There are a couple of plot points that are maybe a bit too obvious for a modern movie, and some of the acting is over-dramatic by modern standards, but by and large, this is a movie that a modern audience could watch and enjoy without having to make allowances for it being old. Like, Blood Simple has a more wry perspective than this does, but the stories aren’t totally dissimilar boiled down to their essences.