William Holden makes a very credible character out of the aging policeman who after twenty years decides to retire, although he knows nothing else. Yes, he has a girl, Lee Remick, but the job gets between him and her. It's an interesting almost documentary study of regular policeman's work on the off beat streets of Los Angeles with hookers and drug dealers and bookies and what not, and he finds it his mission to keep the crap at bay. It is a rather bleak story and typically melancholy for a William Holden film, and he makes it one of his best films, although there are so many of them. It is in a way a study of life in the gutter, and someone appropriately tells him that he is married to the gutter. He wants to leave it and get away from it, but the film and the story never tells if and in that case how he really succeeds. It is actually two films that can be watched separately, but watching them in one stretch is fully rewarding. The music by Nelson Riddle is excellent and adds to the fascinating genuineness of the whole. It is not an edifying film, no entertainment, no great action, but the more interesting for actually being profoundly human providing an indispensable insight into the truth of a naked city.
