On Dangerous Ground (1951)

 Robert Ryan is a mad cop. He's mad because his once promising athletic career didn't work out; he's mad that he's a city cop, working nights with the dregs of humanity and two weeks ago two of his fellow cops were murdered and the killers are still at large. So he's taken to being a little rougher with suspects the he ought to, a little losser with the law, his fellow officers are beginning to find him unpleasant to work with. His boss decides he needs some airing out, loans him to a small community "up state" that needs some help with a murder investigation.

Up in the wintery mountans a young girl has been killed, the local force is short handed and the girls father (Ward Bond) is openly threatening to hunt down and kill the man who did it. The man (Sumner Williams, director Nic Ray's nephew) is a kid really, not right in the head; he's got a blind sister (Ida Lupino) who Ryan tries to work to get the kid to turn himself in. Ryan is attracted to Lupino, she invokes in him an empathy he thought long dead in himself. She makes him think that maybe he could not be mad, maybe he could find peace with her in the mountains. First however he's got to bring her brother in and keep a grief stricken father from taking the law into his own hands.

This is two movies really, a gritty city based noir at first, a sort of extended prolog to bring context to Ryan's character, to provide contrast. It's about 30 minutes into this 81 minute movie before Ryan makes it out to the country, there things open up both physically and emotionally and the film becomes sort of a western. Ryan and Lupino are both good, while Bond gives one of the better performances of his career. Sumner Williams is a little weak, a napo hire, and the Bernard Herman score is a great addition to the piece. 

That first half hour has such a seamy energy to it, you really feel dropped into this world, there's a sense that all these characters have stories of their own and you kind of want to know them; so when the gear shifts to the mountains, even though that stuff is good you kind of miss what came before. Ray shows himself at home both on studio sets and in the mountain locations. This movie has an ending that might not have worked, but Ray forces it to come together. ***