Rogue Cop (1954) - film review

After honest cop Eddie Kelvaney witnesses a stabbing in a penny arcade, gangster bosses Beaumonte and Ackerman put pressure on his brother Chris, another cop, to ensure the murderer is not brought to justice.  Eddie is outraged when Chris offers him a bribe, since he has sworn never to end up like his brother, a rogue cop who habitually deals with criminals.  When Eddie is gunned down by a hired hitman, Chris goes on the offensive, although his efforts to find the killer may be thwarted by his police superiors...

Rogue Cop is a superior noir thriller which, whilst dealing with familiar themes (police corruption and revenge) distinguishes itself with the quality of its screenplay and mise-en-scène, both of which achieve the kind of near-documentary realism and hard-edged brutality that characterised the best of the later film noir dramas. The film is based on a book of the same title by the acclaimed American crime writer William P. McGivern, whose equally uncompromising novel The Big Heat had been adapted by Fritz Lang the previous year. 

Tougher and smoother than a Teflon-coated brick, Robert Taylor heads a superlative cast and delivers a suitably hardboiled portrayal of the seemingly amoral cop around whom the drama revolves.   At a career low-point after a series of incredibly bad decisions, George Raft makes a startling return to form as the vicious gangster boss, the very role that had first brought him fame in the 1930s.   Janet Leigh is stunning as the femme fatale, but Anne Francis gets to play the more interesting female character, one whose ill-treatment drives home the viciousness and sordid nature of this particular noir landscape.  

Whilst the noir archetypes are easily identified, they are also recognisable as real people, whose motivations and failings are convincing enough for us to identify with.  The stereotypical good cop, bad cop delineation  breaks down way before the film’s mid-point and the characters are revealed to be much more complex than we had supposed.  Roy Rowland directs the film with great flair, eschewing the stylised approach of previous film noir thrillers whilst respecting the rules of the genre almost to the letter. Rowland particularly excels in the spectacular final shoot out sequence, which is easily one of the most nerve-wracking and realistically violent of any noir thriller of this era.   A classic of its genre, Rogue Cop ventures into new and controversial territory by blurring the moral boundaries, implying that the police need to step outside the law occasionally in order to do their job effectively.  In its cynical anti-hero Chris Kelvaney we see the maverick cops of future police dramas, Dirty Harry and his rule-breaking, authority-loathing ilk.

© James Travers 2011

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