MartinHafer Agents O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) and Grayson (Louis Hayward) are investigating how nuclear secrets could have gotten out of the country and into the hands of evil Commies. Being that they ARE evil, the enemy will stop at nothing...including beating and shooting women...in order to destroy freedom and America. Are the pair smart enough and tough enough to win?What I liked most about this film noir picture is that it is unflinching and brutal for 1948. It's a very tough picture and really delivers for lovers of the genre. My only complaint is the use of a terrible cliche near the end of the picture. Agent O'Hara figures finally out who is passing on the secrets to the Russians but instead of telling everyone immediately over the phone, he tells them he'll meet them and tell them. You just KNOW that means that the enemy will then try to kill him before he has a chance to tell...an obvious plot device to say the least. Still, apart from that it's NOT cliched and well written.

clanciai This is one of the best espionage films ever made, for being so perfectly clever, realistic and actual in its day for the crisis of atomic secrets being smuggled to the Soviet Union, which really set the cold war off. Advanced nuclear technology is being smuggled out out from an extremely well guarded and sealed up atomic research centre, and it's impossible to understand how this is done. Five top scientists are the only ones privy to what is going on, and one of them is a traitor. Two of them are lovers, as one of them is a very beautiful woman. Raymond Burr is the very subtle villain here, he appears from the start and leads the way to the crisis and the ultimate meltdown, but the development to that climax is very careful and slow. As Dennis O'Keefe as the leading FBI investigator can't make head or tails of it on his own, a Scotland Yard agent is imported (Louis Hayward, always dashing,) and with his help they gradually approach the mystery. He even takes a job as a laundry worker to help things out, which nonetheless leads to serious trouble.It's a subtle thriller, and the final solution to the mystery couldn't have been more cleverly contrived, while the developed crisis on the way is no easy ordeal.

mark.waltz The world has shown evidence that the fight against Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito did not leave us in a better place in fighting for freedom as we headed into the late 1940's. In fact, evidence showed that we had to fight harder for it, both in front of the scenes and behind the scenes, as if you were even suspected of being communist, you were subject to having every move you made traced. The F.B.I. was everywhere that worries about communism creeping in to democracy, and in this film, they join forces with Scotland Yard to keep those dirty reds from infiltrating the government. Lakeview California is the focus of the three settings where this film takes place where nuclear military secrets are being stolen, shown when an agent is shot point blank while at a boxing match just as he is about to reveal about what he knows going on behind the scenes of the nuclear factory located there.Evidence takes FBI agent Dennis O'Keefe to San Francisco where he is joined by Scotland Yard agent Louis Hayward in tracking down the killer who is quickly dispatched there. So now they are on the hunt for the killer of a killer, with enemy agents revealing that in order to achieve their goals, they must face the facts that if their cover is blown, they too will suffer the same fate as the first killer received. "I'm an American!", one suspect reveals, to which he is told, "Yes, so was another American. His name was Benedict Arnold." But are who they suspect of the scientists working at the factory actual traitors? One of them is the attractive Louise Albritton, and indeed, she is seen dropping off information at a laundry where one of the men seen at a meeting of the spies works.This is not up there with anti-Communist propaganda films such as "The Red Menace", "I Married a Communist" or John Wayne's big-time fiasco, "Big Jim McLain", more of an anti crime story where the subject simply happens to be spies trying to gain important military secrets. With typical film noir narration, it moves along at a brisk speed, particularly tense during a sequence in San Francisco where the agents break into the suspected second killer's apartment and utilize all sorts of FBI gadgets to obtain the information they require to nail him and his co-horts. It gets more tense as it moves to Los Angeles and back to Lakewood where the plot wraps up heatedly with a race to stop the villains from getting the pivotal information into the wrong hands.One of those hands is Raymond Burr, typecast during the late 40's and 50's as a film noir villain. You can tell he's a villain here because even his beard is villainous. Reed Hadley made a career out of narrating crime films, and he is the glue which keeps this together and interesting. A scene on the highway where the villains shoot at one of the good guys is extremely intense and rather nail-biting. This isn't a great movie by any means, but an entertaining and thrilling espionage drama with a film noir structure to keep it moving, and one that subtly reminded movie audiences of the late 40's that freedom didn't come without a price.

sol **SPOILERS** With hard edge news documentary style narrating by Reed Hadley the film "Walk a Crooked Mile" was made and released by Hollywood during the congressional hearing about Hollywood possible being run by crypto Communists both behind and in front of the camera. It was suspected by many in the US Congress and Senate that they were secretly brainwashing the clueless US movie audiences on the wonders of the Communist system by incorporating them into their films. In the film there's this Communist spy ring that unfiltered the Lakeview Nuclear Labs in Southern California who's been stealing formulas in advance nuclear physics and atomic bomb making.It's up to FBI Secret Agent Dan O'Hara, Dennis O'Keefe, and his partner from across the ocean Scotland yard investigator Philip Grayson, Louis Hayward, to crack the ring and bring those in it to justice. What makes both O'Hara & Grayson's job so difficult is that the sneaky Communists have a secret system of sneaking out the information to their outside contact in far off San Francisco from right under the FBI's noses! What's even worse is if that any one of the crew of Communists screws up and is about to be pinched or arrested by the FBI and spill the beans on them they suddenly end up dead.A bit over the top in how the Communist agents use strong arm tactics that in fact would, like it did in the film, exposed not hide them in plain sight from the FBI as well as local police. Among the Communist goons who do the dirty work for them is future TV Perry Mason Raymond Burr as Krebs who's Mafia like bone and head breaking actions do far more harm to their cause then help it.It takes a while for both O'Hara & Grayson to find out not just how the Communist ring inside Lakeview not only sneaks out the important information but who's the person in charge of it. By then the two were caught worked over and almost killed by the Communist agents and their goons who had so many chances to murder them but somehow didn't. This in fact made them look far more decent then they were supposed, in showing what murderous rats they are, to be in the movie. That by not batting an eye in gunning down or poisoning anyone, even among themselves, whom they slightly suspected was a danger to their secret plans.***SPOILERS*** In the end both O'Hara & Grayson finally managed to escape from their butterfingered Communist captors and finally track down the head of the Communist ring at the Lakeview Nuclear Labs but only after O'Hara is again almost killed by the Communists on his way to meet Gryson and with the help of the local police and FBI arrest him. Still after being caught "red handed " the head man of the Communist ring at the Lakeview Nuclear Labs will be protected of his rights as an American citizen guaranteed by the US Constitution that he and his fellow Communist secret agents were so desperately, to the point of murder, trying to destroy.