Robert Ryan (an amateur boxer himself) gives a superb performance as an aging middleweight who spoils a gangster's arrangement for a fix by insisting on a win-despite fierce punishment in the ring from his younger opponent. Audrey Totter is his wife, desperate for an end to the boxing life. Georges Sadoul writes about The Set-Up in his "Dictionary of Films":
"Set entirely at night in a seedy provincial town, this harsh portrait of the boxing world, with its petty crooks and its sadistic, hysterical crowds, has rarely been matched. Robert Ryan gives a good characterization of the battered, but indefatigable, boxer."