Review of Portrait of a Mobster

First, I was very enjoyed and surprised to see Ray Danton in his Legs Diamond character, which he also had in Budd Boetticher's RISE AND FALL OF LEGS DIAMOND, shot the same year. Very smart. Here, Vic Morrow is the lead in a terrific performance, one of his best, for a good Joseph Pevney's film, Pevney who was only an excellent film maker with no personnal touch, as were Joseph Newman or Richard Thorpe, and so many other directors. This movie is of course a rise and fall scheme of a gangster, nothing new. I repeat, there were dozens of those during the early sixties. This one is not a masterpiece but a gritty, tough one.