Shakedown

‘Howard Duff plays the unscrupulous Jack Early, a newspaper photographer from San Francisco whose quest for fame leads him, through a cynical, career-boosting affair with his boss Ellen Bennett (Peggy Dow), leading him to stray further and further from the straight and narrow and slip into the rough world of blackmail. He even persuades the gangster Nick Palmer (Brian Donlevy) to allow him to photograph one of Palmer’s henchmen, Harry Colton (Lawrence Tierney), carrying out a heist, which leads to a bloody vendetta. The film gets off to a breakneck start and never lets up throughout its 80 minutes – it is as ruthless as it is surprising. Duff is a protagonist as unsympathetic and unsentimental as can be, and feels completely at home in the deeply corrupt world that director Pevney depicts with relish and clear echoes of film noir.» (Derek Winnert, derekwinnert.com, March 2020)