Paramount Pictures
Directed by Jules Dassin
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Blu-ray, Olive Films)
A militant black group in Cleveland kicks out one of its members when he gets drunk and fails to help them rob a warehouse of ammunition. After a guard is killed, one of them becomes hunted by the police. The ex-member turns him in for a reward, then spends the money in a wild night of drinking. The other gang members put him on trial and sentence him to death. This works on multiple levels: the personal story of the informer, the numbing effect of factory work in the big city, race relations in the late 60s, how violence begets violence, and more. Another triumph from director Dassin, although the topic lacks the same immediacy today as it had at the time of its release after the assassination of Martin Luther King, whose funeral is shown at the beginning of the film.
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