Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski) Between Midnight and Dawn (1950) (Alert of spoilers) Edmond O'Brien is on the beat as a "prowl car cop" with his partner. It starts out good then delves into personal relationships and avoids anymore gritty noir. There's a decent car chase scene, some bad script continuity like the cops finding the car that shot up one of the main cop protagonists with ease and no stand out villains (think Lee Van Cleef in Kansas City Confidential (1952), Neville Brand in D.O.A. (1950) or The Mob (1951), William Conrad in The Killers (1946) and Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death (1947).) The ending is ridiculous as well, since one lousy main bad guy (Donald Buka) takes a young girl hostage and one hundred cops show up with searchlights.Edmond O'Brien is his usual big-mouthed self, annoying us plenty; he's better as a villain.Still, worth a look for the old city view (Pacific Electric Building, Los Angeles, California (1905)) and lovely Black and White Film.City That Never Sleeps (1953), a Republic Pictures noir with Gig Young as a cop on the beat, is a lot better.

mark.waltz Two patrol cops, one a light-hearted rookie (Mark Stevens), the other a cynical veteran (Edmund O'Brien), are old army buddies who fall for a pretty new secretary (Gale Storm) in their division and together escort her out for a night on the town. She is determined not to fall in love with a cop, having watched her mother ("Batman's" Madge Blake) go through losing her cop husband in the line of duty, but sweet mama interferes to the point of renting the second half of their duplex home to the two, frustrating Gale who wanted to steer clear of the two entirely outside of the office.Dominating the sugar-coated situation comedy of this plot line is the determination to bring down a local crime kingpin (Donald Buka) who has resorted to violence in order to prevent his organization from being taken over by an even more ruthless mobster. This leads to one of the two cops being brutally murdered and the determination of the killer to escape from prison and seek revenge with the help of his nightclub singer girlfriend (Gale Robbins). This leads to a tense stand-off at the end involving Buka, Robbins and a screaming little girl whom Buka uses as a shield in order to get away. The mood changes drastically from the brief foray into light-hearted slapstick to gritty street drama, and the violence is actually quite graphic. It's not a great film, but certain sequences will have you on the edge of your seats.

chipe I found this movie to be very enjoyable to watch. There was no masterful overriding story, but it moved along at a good pace, was quite genial and had no faults. It might be called an early "procedural" in today's lingo: lots of radio squad car scenes, beaming messages in cop talk back and forth, well photographed auto chase scenes and shootouts. The directing, script, acting and cinema-photography were superior. In the movie the cops were all righteous and the criminals all incorrigibly bad. Three things stood out for me, favorably: (1) I was always a big Gale Storm fan, stemming from my childhood watching of "My Little Margie" re-runs on TV (Gale was the co-star of the TV show, and part of the romantic triangle in this movie). (2) The repartee was often witty and jocular and never off-putting. For example, on an early date, Officer Rocky Barnes (played by Mark Stevens) is having his first dance with Gale Storm, and, holding her tightly he says, "I've been waiting a long time for this." She replies, "I can believe it. I feel a rib cracking." He responds, "Oh, control yourself, Barnes. This lady's got to last." (3) The relationship between the two police partners (Stevens and Edmond O'Brien) was friendly and jocular. It was nice to observe their respect for each other. Both were quite competent. O'Brien was the more serious, cynical and hard on criminals. Stevens was more relaxed and sensitive to criminals' feelings.

robert-temple-1 This is a superb crime drama featuring two buddy cops, excellently played by Mark Stevens and Edmond O'Brien. O'Brien's performance is especially marvellous, and he was really in his stride. Three years later he would be tapped by director Ida Lupino to star in 'The Bigamist' (1953), which was surely the greatest performance of his career. He 'really had it in him' despite not being the leading man type, and he should have won more than just one Oscar in his career. This film is helped by a sensationally good screenplay by Eugene Ling. It is packed with excellent one-liners and gags, and has a lot of well-judged humour, even though it is a tense and noirish crime thriller, with a lot of police procedural background. At one point, one of the cops thrusts a bill into the breast pocket of a hood's jacket and says: 'Here, buy yourself a new head, one with a brain in it.' Salty comments like that run all the way through. Modern screenwriters have absolutely no idea how to write wisecracks which work when spoken, it is a lost art, and this is one reason why so many contemporary films are so lacklustre and dull. The chief 'hood' in this story is a criminal played by Donald Buka, who is so eerily convincing as a crazed crook, with his relentless eyes and severe case of lockjaw that one's spine tingles menacingly. Gale Storm is the wholesome love interest who has to overcome the psychological trauma of her policeman father having been killed on duty, and can she get involved with a cop and risk all that pain again. It is a good solid story. Buddy cops really can be just like that. My best friend from school became a sergeant on the D.C. police force, and I used to ride around in his patrol car with him and his buddy while on duty, visit the jails and chat to the latest prostitute arrests, hang around with the cops in his precinct at the station, and exchange gags and joke with them about the street corner drug-pushers ('candy-men'). Banter was the order of the day, as it is the only way to keep sane on a big city US police force, with enforced familiarity with human vermin on a daily basis. Two nice guys really can drive around, responding to calls, draw out their guns and shoot violent criminals, bring people in in handcuffs, and then sit and have a quiet hamburger and roar with jokes with their pals. Mark Stevens and Edmond O'Brien are wholly convincing as buddy cops, mixing toughness with tenderness, and it is obvious that they were copied in hundreds of later television dramas. This was undoubtedly a seminal film which had enormous influence on the film industry. It is very entertaining to watch, though some people will bite their nails anxiously in between the jokes, as portions of the tale are extremely harrowing, especially when a little girl is held hostage by a mad gunman and dangled out of a high window to prevent the police firing at him.