Nick Ray's study of the vigilante mentality is here personified in one pent-up, brutalizing cop (Robert Ryan). Ray pegs the impulse toward vengeance, like that of forgiveness, as a personal moment even when it belongs to the crowd. Ryan's Jim Wilson is a particular kind of big-city neurotic, tortured by his cheerless existence. On the streets, he is judge and jury: we are all guilty of being human. Wilson is banished temporarily to Twin Peaks country, where the townsfolk, led by a murdered girl's father (Ward Bond), are out for blood and a mentally disturbed killer is being protected by his sister (Ida Lupino). Lupino, by 1951, needed only to be introduced by her voice; we hear her before we see her-she plays a blind woman-and that deep resonance alters the tone of the film. She becomes seer to Ryan's cop who can't close his eyes. Set to a Bernard Herrmann score, the glistening urban noir gives way to a moody snowscape that looks forward to Shoot the Piano Player. Understanding and redemption come, as always in these fatalistic films, a few heartbeats too late.