Edmond O'Brien makes Popeye Doyle look like a crossing guard as a corrupt cop in Shield to Murder. High on The American Dream he turns other lives into nightmares or worse in this compact cynical story of police corruption.
Trigger happy detective Barney Nolan waylays a gambler with a wad and wastes him using a silencer. Not the first time he's shot someone but the thin blue line is not about to be crossed. Nolan has big plans for the cash with his hat check girlfriend that he is violently jealous over along with a house he just bought in the burbs. The pressure begins to build when the mob comes calling for their money and a witness to the initial robbery mysteriously dies but Nolan remains resolute in his dream and expires from it on his front lawn under a hail of bullets.
O'Brien plays Nolan with paranoid intensity, a victim as well as victimizer in the corrupt world he has made his living. The pressure on his face never subsides (unless facing off with his girlfriend) as he mightily attempts to make a go at a tenuous caper. Special mention should also go to Carolyn Jones doing a loopy bar fly kibitzing with Nolan on his demented level. In a couple of years she would get an Academy Award nomination for a variation of it in The Bachelor Party.
Visually there are actual gaffes with a boom mike shadow but two particularly well edited scenes resonate; a shootout in a locker room and pool area along with a brutal beat down in a restaurant reaffirming Nolan's vicious nature. With nothing redemptive outside of his warped love for his girl O'Brien's Nolan remains unsympathetic from end to end making Shield to Murder an ugly but decent watch.
Trigger happy detective Barney Nolan waylays a gambler with a wad and wastes him using a silencer. Not the first time he's shot someone but the thin blue line is not about to be crossed. Nolan has big plans for the cash with his hat check girlfriend that he is violently jealous over along with a house he just bought in the burbs. The pressure begins to build when the mob comes calling for their money and a witness to the initial robbery mysteriously dies but Nolan remains resolute in his dream and expires from it on his front lawn under a hail of bullets.
O'Brien plays Nolan with paranoid intensity, a victim as well as victimizer in the corrupt world he has made his living. The pressure on his face never subsides (unless facing off with his girlfriend) as he mightily attempts to make a go at a tenuous caper. Special mention should also go to Carolyn Jones doing a loopy bar fly kibitzing with Nolan on his demented level. In a couple of years she would get an Academy Award nomination for a variation of it in The Bachelor Party.
Visually there are actual gaffes with a boom mike shadow but two particularly well edited scenes resonate; a shootout in a locker room and pool area along with a brutal beat down in a restaurant reaffirming Nolan's vicious nature. With nothing redemptive outside of his warped love for his girl O'Brien's Nolan remains unsympathetic from end to end making Shield to Murder an ugly but decent watch.