The Big Combo takes a long, low angle on a city populated by characters one less sympathetic than the next, our heroes the least of any. Cornel Wilde is a cop, hunting gangster Richard Conte for reasons below and beyond the call of duty: Wilde is obsessively devoted to Jean Wallace, who has left him for Conte. But into a superbly constructed, classic film noir, Joseph H. Lewis has infused his unique concern for human emotionality, expressed, as Myron Meisel points out, “through finely attuned visual symbols.... Lewis...takes care not to suggest that all this murky ambience constitutes any vision of the world at large.... He insists on preserving his reasonableness for all his fascination with dementia.” (in “Kings of the Bs”) (JB)