"Joseph Mankiewicz's No Way Out launched not only Sidney Poitier's career but the cycle of problem pictures in the 1950s. Literate and sophisticated, the movie spotlighted the race riots that had broken out after World War II, at the same time presenting a sensitive portrait of the educated Negro. The plot centers on a young Negro doctor, Luther Brooks, at a large metropolitan hospital. (When one of two wounded white hoodlums dies), the other (Richard Widmark) accuses Brooks of murder. Thereafter the young doctor is embroiled in controversy and he fights to prove his innocence...With its crisp and quick-witted dialogue, No Way Out to some degree captured the mood of postwar America and summed up its repressed racial hostilities." --Donald Bogle, An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films