Boomerang!

Not unlike that other Elia Kazan noir (On the Waterfront, 1954), Boomerang! stars Dana Andrews as a man caught between the force of rapacious corruption and the moral compulsion to do the right thing. Under significant pressure by a reform-minded administration to find the killer of a beloved priest in Bridgeport, Connecticut, city attorney Henry Harvey (Andrews) prepares to prosecute a young, disillusioned veteran (Arthur Kennedy) who ends up the prime suspect based on a hasty investigation and circumstantial evidence. There’s only one problem: Harvey doesn’t believe he did it. Inspired by true events, the film lacks the visual inventiveness of some of Kazan’s later work, but that fits the procedural material; the police roles are relatively small — Lee J. Cobb plays police chief Harold Robinson and Karl Malden plays Detective White — and all the glory goes to Harvey in the courtroom. “It’s always the same. You look around long enough you’ll find some guy with his fingers in the till.”