Based on Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely," this hard-boiled crime thriller is one of the best of its kind: Dmytryk's direction heralded a new era of realism on the back lots of the big studios and Dick Powell is superb as a seedy private eye trailing a punchy ex-convict's blonde mistress. James Agee's praise is typical of the critical esteem bestowed on this unusual film: "...sets that should look threadbare have seldom looked so rat-ridden.... There is an enthusiastic appetite for everything possible sinister about a big city and its people. The makers of the film go further with their realism: they try to make sensations and states of mind visual."