Rogue Cop

Robert Taylor’s noir characters at MGM were often morally conflicted yet consistently charming scumbags, from his duplicitous title character in Mervyn LeRoy’s Johnny Eager (1940) to his attorney trying to quit the mob in Nicholas Ray’s Party Girl (1958); less thrilling but still satisfying is his stop along the way as crooked cop Chris Kelvaney in Roy Rowland’s Rogue Cop. On the take from some of the shadiest gangsters in town, Kelvaney is the total opposite of his little brother Eddie (Steve Forrest), an honorable cop whose continued pursuit of a criminal gang led by Dan Beaumonte (George Raft) places his life in danger. Unwilling to accede to his older brother’s pleas to stay out of it, Eddie soon turns up as a corpse, his murder witnessed by his fiancée Karen Stephanson (Janet Leigh), who’s placed under police protection as the investigation unfolds. Recognizing that they share a tendency toward indecency (“We’re the same kind of dirt”), Chris ties up with Karen to avenge Eddie’s murder and take down Beaumonte. Anne Francis plays Nancy Corlane, the miserable, alcoholic moll who needs a little push to leave the abusive Beaumonte and his threats to “kick her back to the gutter,” while Vince Edwards has one of his earliest film roles as thuggish murder suspect Joey Langley. The film may lack the added tension of music (the score is practically nonexistent) and noir stylistics (there’s minimal low-key lighting, for example), but it still manages to serve up a biting story with a tone that’s cold as ice.