Crime Wave (1954)

Three San Quentin escapees (Penny, Hastings and Morgan) kill a cop in a gas-station holdup. Wounded, Morgan flees through black-shadowed streets to the handiest refuge: with former cellmate Steve Lacey, who's paroled, with a new life and lovely wife, and can't afford to be caught associating with old cronies. But homicide detective Sims wants to use Steve to help him catch Penny and Hastings, who in turn extort his help in a bank job. Is there no way out for Steve?


Cine negro de culto de los años 50. Junto con Fuller, Ray, Joseph H. Lewis, De Toth formaba parte del pelotón de directores reivindicados por F. Truffaut en los Cahiers du cinéma. Actuación estelar de Sterling Hayden, y una de las primeras actuaciones de un tal Charles Buchinsky.

Something like a god looks down over Los Angeles by night, and though he breathes out so much authority there's not enough wind left to raise his voice, he's also betrayed by the pack of toothpicks he smokes every shift. Ink-eyed Sterling Hayden is that god in the form of an seemingly unflappable police detective in André De Toth's Crime Wave, a relentlessly unforced potboiler that gazes at noir through the looking glass.

Slant Magazine
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