Looking into a fellow cop's sudden suicide, straight-arrow officer Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford) uncovers a trail of graft leading to the heart of his own department. But some people don't appreciate him sniffing around. When his investigation blows back on his family, Bannion embarks on a brutal and increasingly unhinged mission of revenge. Directed by Fritz Lang, whose expressionistic German films shaped the noir aesthetic, this beast of a thriller anticipated the morally ambiguous police films of the '60s and '70s.