Brothers on opposite sides of the moral law is a common setup in noir, but the contrast is especially stark when one brother is a Catholic priest, as in, for example, Roy Del Ruth’s Red Light (1949) and this one, Miguel Lluch’s El precio de un asesino (US: The Price of a Murderer). In Lluch’s film, brother number one is Javier Velasco (Julián Mateos), a hired killer for a French crime syndicate active in Barcelona and led by Bernstein (Ismael Merlo) and henchman (Luis Induni), while brother number two is Miguel Velasco (Víctor Valverde), a seminarian in the countryside. When Javier gets in too deep, the woman who loves him in spite of his neglect, Beatriz Morales (Margarita Lozano), arrives at the seminary to fetch Miguel so he can help set his gunshot wounded brother on a redemptive path (Javier thanks Beatriz by beating her). After Miguel leaves the seminary and immerses himself in the hell of crime, the brothers are set on a collision course with the gangsters, the police, and each other, culminating in a final act of frenetic action across ruins and rooftops. Held for two years before the Franco regime allowed its exhibition, the film immediately establishes an atmosphere of desperation, made even more vivid when Miguel first arrives looking for Javier at a tapas bar where he’s rescued from violent brawlers by an alcoholic patron and his friend-prostitute living in a filthy apartment. Silvia Solar plays Dana, the sexy femme fatale whose designs on Javier may have ulterior motives.