One of the best of the Fifties' cycle of liberal films on the “race problem,” Edge of the City holds up well thanks to skillful direction and use of locations by Martin Ritt. Peter Cowie has written:
“Axel (John Cassavetes) is an army deserter with an unhappy family background, who has assumed a guilt complex for the death of his brother. He finds a job as a freight handler in the New York train yards, alongside Tommy (Sidney Poitier), a Negro who takes him in hand and tries to show him that life can be good. Axel's search for self-respect is hampered by a vicious foreman in the yard. ‘In this world,' he is told, ‘there are two sorts. There are the men and there are the lower forms,' and when he fights the foreman in a tense duel with freight hooks, he finds that Tommy sacrifices his life for him.
“Despite the predictable pattern of its story, which ends with Axel's dragging his enemy to justice, Edge of the City is commendable for its sophisticated attitude towards the color problem.”